Upon Reflection
A political cartoonist sums up the news...
It’s rare that I would write this much about just one cartoon, but this story’s been going on for months and takes some explaining, so let’s get started:
APRIL
According to British news organization The Guardian: back in April a German friend of Donald Trump’s visits the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and tells Donald the water looks disgusting (because that’s what needs cleaning up in Washington, D.C.—the water in the Reflecting Pool) and Trump decides to issue a no-bid contract to seal the seams and “paint” the bottom of the pool “American Flag Blue.”
And I used those “” marks because we’ll need to discuss what “paint” means and “American Flag Blue” is actually officially called “Old Glory Blue” and as usual, these are only the first of many digressions, so get used to it.
It’s estimated the project will take 1-to-2 weeks and cost $1.5-to-$2 million because government can’t unplug a toilet for anything less than seven figures.
Bypassing the National Park Service, the Trump Administration selects Greenwater Services of Bumfuck, Ohio to install a water purification system. Greenwater Services is owned by JJ Cafaro Investment Trust, which is led by John J. Cafaro, a Trump donor and Mar-a-Lago neighbor and who could have seen that coming?
Atlantic Industrial Coatings and a subcontractor, Mid-America Industrial Coatings, are responsible for the “paint” part of the project.
And right here let’s take a break from talking about how America is not based on capitalism or communism; it’s based on cronyism.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you blow and while it might sound like I’ve got that quote wrong, I don’t think I do.
Back when AIC was given the no-bid contract, Trump said they had done some work on his properties and fixed up a swimming pool that remains “perfect to this day.” But once the shit (or “paint”) hit the fan (and we’re going to have way more on that) Trump claimed he didn’t know them and had never used them before.
But let’s keep things in chronological order because the story gets more convoluted than a Professor Irwin Corey explanation of time travel.
And while we’re digressing I should also point out that the media did its usual bang-up job of explaining things (just ask any baseball writer how Wins Above Replacement is calculated) and in this case, the media originally said the Reflecting Pool was going to be “painted” American Flag Blue, but then started talking about a “liner” coming loose and started using “paint” and “liner” interchangeably, so if you’re confused, it’s not 100% your fault.
If the AI Robot that answers questions for Google while biding its time until Skynet tells it to start killing us humans is correct:
“Workers applied a multi-layered sprayed polymer and epoxy membrane system that functioned as a painted waterproof coating and a plastic-like liner.”
So apparently: it was sprayed on like spray paint and then dried into what became the liner and a political cartoonist shouldn’t have to be the one to explain this.
So far, so good and we’re now up to...
MAY
Non-profits try to stop the project over “hysterical preservation concerns” because apparently Americans have a deep historical connection to scummy water.
We even write songs about it:
Next up: Trump decides he wants to see how the project is going, so he decides to have his SUV motorcade drive down the middle of the drained, but now coated basin of the Reflecting Pool, which is a lot like walking through wet cement to see how your new patio is coming along:
JUNE
So now the pool is refilled using the crystal clear waters of the Potomac River Tidal Pool (which is a joke in every sense of the word) and turns out, if you put dirty, stagnant water in a shallow pool and bake it in the sun, guess what: algae blooms.
Maintenance crews try to treat the water with hydrogen peroxide and nano-bubble technology which sounds like the part where the hydrogen peroxide fizzes up (and your mom blows on it, like her germs are going to be beneficial), but probably isn’t and the American Flag Blue liner starts to bubble and split.
Cost climbs to between $14 and $16 million and the fact that government thinks a $2 million guesstimate is close enough for government work, tells you a lot about what’s wrong with this country and the government that runs it.
So now the Pool’s problems are a national story and 4th of July is just around the corner and people are coming to see Trump’s Latest Fuckup and guy named David Hearn drops by to see what’s what and makes the mistake of reaching into the water to feel part of the liner that’s floating by.
And because Trump now really really needs someone to blame, Hearn is arrested and charged with property destruction. If convicted, Hearn faces 10 years in jail and a $1,000 fine which doesn’t sound like nearly enough money.
What Hearn did is so serious he might spend 10 years in prison, but he’s getting fined $9,000 less than Ian Kinsler did for accurately calling Angel Hernandez a horseshit umpire?
And speaking of athletes…
Turns out David Hearn is a former Olympic athlete; one of the people we temporarily care about every four years and seems like a really unlikely candidate for anti-American vandalism.
Which doesn’t stop Trump from saying this:
“We had vandalism. It’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and re-fix it. They went in there with a knife. I was just told by the people over at Parks, five people are arrested, and five people are under investigation right now – and it’s a sad thing.”
In other words: the Manson Family did it and there’s a manhunt on for Bigfoot.
JULY
Jeanine Pirro—United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host who, after she appeared on a remote broadcast from home, slurring her words with her hair dicked up, was portrayed on Saturday Night Live as a boxed-wine-swilling moron—says National Park Service employees saw Hearn “forcefully and violently” pulling at the lining and becoming belligerent when told to stop.
So they shot him.
(Just kidding, that didn’t happen because David Hearn is White.)
Hearn is indicted (no word on his four fictional co-conspirators) and Jeanine says the government’s case is based on “tremendous evidence.”
Nevertheless, on July 31st, the government drops the case against Hearn and blames the damage to the pool liner as “the result of flawed installation by the contractor.”
The government uses a 20-page filing to say they had received information about a “rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026”
The government filing also acknowledged “a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool.”
Pirro—a longtime Trump Brownnoser—would seem to be an unlikely candidate for standing up to Trump, but looked at another way:
Jeanine sees the evidence that Hearn wasn’t responsible for screwing up the Reflecting Pool and knows she’s going to look like a horse’s ass (OK, make that an even bigger horse’s ass) in court and decides to abandon ship and mix her metaphors by simultaneously doing a Pontius Pilate and blames the Department of the Interior for providing “less than fulsome information at the outset of the case.”
So it’s not her fault and these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
The filing also said, had: “DOI been more forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
But when has the lack of evidence ever stopped Donald Trump from saying something?
AUGUST
So now Trump’s pissed and goes on social media and says:
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”
Once you’ve covered politicians for a few decades, you learn to spot their “weasel words” and in this example the weasel words are “to me” because they allow you to ignore all the inconvenient evidence and turn it into a personal opinion.
I’ll show you how it works:
“I disagree 100% with Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what he was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of Trump being a DICK.”
According to The Daily Beast (Jesus, you’d think a Weekly Beast would be more than adequate) Pirro got called on the carpet (and for her sake, let’s hope another Trump crony didn’t install it) and she tried to claim she had nothing to do with the filing that dismissed the case.
So let’s go over that one more time…
Your Attorney for D.C. boss calls a national press conference and says David Hearn is Jack the Lining Ripper and you decide to go behind her back and dismiss the case without telling her?
Not bloody likely and here’s the article that says so:
Today’s Lesson
If you surround yourself with a bunch of ass-kissing, opportunistic sycophants, they’re not really loyal to you, they’re just looking for the best deal available, so if kissing your ass doesn’t work out, as long as they’re behind you anyway, they’ll be just as happy to stab you in the back.
And while those of us who loathe these people might enjoy seeing them attack each other, how much do you want to bet that Trump’s cronies who fucked up the Reflecting Pool aren’t held responsible for fixing it and we’ll get the bill.
And if you’re thinking that would be totally unfair and they wouldn’t have the balls to do that, just remember who got charged $132 billion to bail out all those savings & loans that ran their businesses into the ground.
But look on the bright side…
At least we’re getting to watch a soap opera for our money.
This whole saga is what happens when you let cronyism run a construction project and then need a fall guy when it goes sideways. A no-bid contract to a Mar-a-Lago neighbor, a $2 million guess that ballooned to $16 million, a liner that peeled apart in the sun like a cheap tarp — and instead of owning any of it, the man goes looking for somebody to indict.
Here’s the thing: David Hearn is a former Olympic athlete, not the Manson Family. Jeanine Pirro stood up in front of cameras and swore this was “tremendous evidence,” and three weeks later her own office is filing paperwork admitting the contractor rushed the job and the lining failed on its own. That’s not a prosecutor changing her mind. That’s a prosecutor watching the evidence walk in the opposite direction and deciding she’d rather blame the Department of the Interior than admit she got played.
And then Trump goes on social media and says it was pure vandalism. That’s a man telling you the facts don’t matter, only the feeling does. When the President of the United States needs weasel words to disagree with his own Justice Department’s court filing, you know exactly what’s happening — somebody screwed up an expensive project, and rather than eat the cost, they went looking for a body to hang it on.
The lesson here isn’t complicated. When you surround yourself with folks who are loyal to your money and not to you, don’t be surprised when the money runs out and so does the loyalty. Pirro threw herself under the bus rather than go to trial with a case built on sand. And somewhere down the line, the taxpayer’s going to get the bill for the pool, same as we always do.
Why do robots need teeth? Also, how much of a kickback do you think Trump got from his contractor buddy?