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Trump's $14M Reflecting Pool Paint Job Is Now Peeling Off And Floating To The Surface
(www.huffpost.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Wait… they’ve been dumping bleach and hydrogen peroxide and who knows what in the pool, did they actually fuck it up from sheer incompetence?
No they paid $17 million to a contractor to do a $500 job. It's not incompetence, it's corruption.
Yes, permanently.
Just drain it and then clean the paint off and sand it down to smooth out the stone again.
Then you can fill the pool with water that has been treated properly.
It's not hard, it just takes competent people being in charge of it. Not someone's "pool guy"
It’s not that simple. They’ve already sand blasted and pebble blasted a couple of times, and this is even after the whole granite reflecting pool was torn out and replaced by concrete several years ago.
The truth is, and this is in no way to defend Trump, fixing the problems with the reflecting pool have been an ongoing issue for more than 25 years now. To those knowledgeable on the issue, what makes Trump‘s failure particularly spectacular is that he was so public about it, spent so much money on it, and clearly had such an incredibly ignorant understanding of the problems at it faced, and what is really required to fix the problems, that it only magnified his already Trumpian buffoonery. Although, I am kind of enjoying this ridiculous failure.
The problems with the Reflecting Pool are both numerous and old. It’s a complicated system that is fed by the nearby Potomac River, has a complicated pumping and filtering system, and just a whole bunch of other bullshit that clearly Donald Trump does not understand. A lot of very intelligent people have spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to fix it, and have still had trouble.
It Trump - with zero knowledge at all (even of its name) thought he could fix it, and hired the most corrupt pool guy he ever met to try – and it has failed so hilariously. Ran on his birthday, too, when a whole butt load of tourists are in Washington DC to see his failure.
The joke here isn’t that Trump failed, which, of course he would, it’s that he failled so publicly and loudly after spending so much time making such a big deal about giving everyone else who did a better job than him shit for not doing what he, himself, has also failed to do.
The thing is, as far as I'm aware, he wasn't even trying to fix the problems. He was, in almost the Trumpiest way possible (the only thing more Trump would be to use fake gold), just trying to gild the lilly. It was purely about appearance, not function.
Like another poster said, it's truly a microcosm of the MAGA/Republican governing style. Pay a buddy way too much pretending that the problem is easy to solve. The buddy grifts by cheaping out on everything. They fuck up the system so badly it becomes a cesspool. And result is that it gets worse and becomes even more expensive to fix.
*And then blame democrats
Don't forget the best part... Now that it's worse than ever, the next attempt to fix it by someone else will be even more expensive and they'll loudly point that out. It will probably the opposite party because voters swing wildly with no memory.
So document everything and have the memes ready to keep the memory alive when the next attempt is made.
My point isn’t an argument against yours. It’s just one segment, and what you’re talking about is another segment.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions. You and I in each of us can be angry at one or two or three of the causes of the problem, but until all of the causes of the problem are identified and dealt with individually, and then, systemically in aggregate, the problems we face a date are not gonna be reversed.
For example, you’re looking at the problem from a top-down view, whereas I have been speaking from the problem from a bottom-up view. It will certainly require not only both of these perspectives, but a middle (up and down)view as well. And a lot more views and perspectives about the causes and results of all of this.
And to even begin to tackle all of us, the biggest thing we all need to realize is that the most important thing is we all realize what is really fucking wrong here: fascism. And that, while we may disagree on some specific particulars on how to deal with it, WE ALL NEED TO DEAL WITH IT, AND WE ALL NEED TO DEAL WITH IT RIGHT NOW.
It’s gonna be difficult, it’s gonna be complicated, and it’s gonna take a long time, but those of us who are against fascism need to stop slapping each other around and silly in fights, and we need to start working together. Now.
We also need to realize that we need the collective courage to shift the Overton window back left by huge leaps and bounds whenever we get the opportunity. And all that this would require of any of us is to be both more human and more humane. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask of any of us here.
The first steps, of course, must be to eliminate the outrageously corrupt gerentocracy that currently is the fatal cancer in the Democratic Party. Embracing and supporting the new wave of young progressive is the only way forward. Is the only way to survival.
The Overton window also needs to be pulled back to the centre of the libertarian/authoritarian axis. It would be no good shifting directly left from where we are now. Authoritarian left sucks about as much as authoritarian right.
Awww. I used to think saving the world could be that easy.
But then 18 years went by, and the world got a lot nastier.
Wake up, do better, and fight harder, for the good of all of us!
So you're saying you gave up, you're never going to not have a boot on your throat, it just needs to be a left wing boot? Why do you even care what flavour of jackboot it is?
Do better and fight harder indeed!
I said nothing of the sort. Perhaps you should learn to read the words in front of you rather than what you wish to hear.
I see your problem right there
You said "competent people", and this is not only the US government, this is the US Trump government.
Competency has gone long, long ago
I'm reading Maintenance of Everything: Part One by Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog and the WELL fame) and it makes a great companion piece to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Anyway, reading this book at the same time as watching this colossal fuckup by know-nothing blowhards like Donvict is quite interesting. For instance, I just read the part about the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty and what was involved, and the discussion on the war on rust.
I'm sure a thoughtful writeup on the problems here and the attempts on fixing it would be a great thing for other parts in the series. I might even reach out to him to suggest it...
Fucking things up with sheer incompetence has been a hallmark of this entire administration. At this point, I'd be astonished if it was just a run-of-the-mill accident.
I just realized my first reaction to this was “SURELY it can’t be this shady contractor that fucked up, it had to have been the US government” and the fact there’s a decent chance that this is correct is somehow still amazing to me.
It's both. This couldn't have happened unless the contractor, and the government employees involved, weren't in agreement here.
Dude, American Patriot Desert Eagle USA Coatings Inc, LLC is sooOooo legit.
According to the article
Apparently, they don't mind the hydrogen peroxide. But maybe that's just the article trying to be funny.
Is that a serious question?
With this country, at this point you can say ‘yes, they fucked it up because if she incompetence’
The it in the sentence can be almost everything…. Only a few things are also because of evil
I think they drank half of it first.
And that was just RFK