Donald Trump’s $14 million Reflecting Pool fiasco has entered its souvenir era.
Just two weeks after the president’s massively misbegotten $14 million overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was officially turned blue, it has already erupted in a record, multiyear bloom of scummy algae, turning the water green instead of the president’s promised “American flag blue.” Then the bottom of the pool began sloughing off blue paint flaps, which also acted as a sealant, that floated to the surface.
Now souvenir hunters are snatching pieces of the paint as keepsakes, further exposing the cement beneath.
CNN reporter-on-the-scene Tom Foreman dutifully declared in a broadcast Friday that he was not putting his hands in the water to avoid making the situation worse. But treasure hunters were.
“There have been tourists coming along, tearing off pieces to take as souvenirs,” Foreman said. “Now, did they cause this problem? I don’t know. Maybe. Did they exacerbate it? Maybe.”
What “we do know is that all the tourists who are coming by are seeing a lot of it,” Foreman added. They’re saying it looks “bad,” and they “feel for the ducks.”
The deterioration of the expensive overhaul highly touted by 80-year-old Trump—which was specifically aimed at changing the color and eradicating, not increasing, the algae—continues to trigger controversy.
The din surrounding Trump’s Reflecting Pool vanity project grew after it was revealed earlier this week that part of the job was awarded in a no-bid contract to a company—the aptly named Greenwater Services—owned by a Trump supporter and two-time felon who pleaded guilty to bribing a congressman and violating campaign finance laws.
The blue sheets in the pool began surfacing this week as workers began scrubbing the bottom of the pool with hydrogen peroxide, or pouring it directly into the water, in a bid to combat the algae. The chemical may have been too caustic for Trump’s American flag-blue paint. In fact, hydrogen peroxide is sometimes used to strip paint from surfaces. Or the paint may have sloughed off anyway if it was poorly applied.
The Department of the Interior has insisted that the pool is “absolutely clear.”
It very clearly is not, Foreman noted.
