In my last newsletter, I had a rather egregious typo - Josh Hokit lied about Michelle Obama being a MAN, not a woman. My apologies.

I have kept an aquarium for nearly 20 years now. I give people new to the hobby two warnings. You are going to kill every fish in your tank at some point. And you are going to deal with an algae bloom at some point. Algae is absolutely everywhere in our environment and it needs very little to thrive.

Some time ago, I was a lab tech working in thin film coating. In three years, we never perfected our process. Adhesion was the issue. Getting a coating to stick to the substrate we were using is a closely guarded trade secret. Coatings are mechanically bonded rather than chemically. There are dozens of things that can go wrong, but ultimately they’re all a matter of the substrate not cooperating with the coating.

Imagine my surprise to see a national story combining my knowledge of aquarium care, coatings, and Donald Trump.

The reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial is a gorgeous park space. It’s also been a royal pain for over a century. The pool has had major issues with the foundation (DC is literally built on a swamp and it keeps sinking), filtration, and algae since the beginning. Much of what’s going wrong right now is Donald Trump’s fault but the pool DID need repairs and there was simply no way to refill the pool without an algae bloom. Algae thrives in shallow, still nutrient-rich water. The water supply is full of algae’s favorite foods.

The current algae bloom was inevitable and not Trump’s fault. However numerous other things have gone wrong here that are. And his reaction to them has been cartoonishly fascist.

The pool actually needed repairing, especially the filtration system. Trump knew he wanted it repaired by the July 4th celebrations. Rather than start the process last year, he skipped the legally mandated process for government bids and hired two companies to handle the renovations. Normally, this process would be bid out to multiple companies to find the one that was best qualified. There is an exception to this requirement if there isn’t time for the process. Trump created that time crunch by waiting until this Spring to begin repairs. The company which handled repairs in the past declined this time because they did not find the timeline feasible.

One of the companies Trump hired is Greenwater Services. Greenwater was contracted to upgrade the filtration system. Given the current algae bloom was 100% inevitable, Greenwater may have done a good job on their part of the renovations. No, the problem with Greenwater is who owns it. Enter one John Cafaro.

John Cafaro has two criminal convictions in his past. He pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions to his daughter’s campaign. But he was also the man caught bribing disgraced former congressman James Traficant. It was Cafaro’s bribes that destroyed Traficant’s career and sent him to prison. Cafaro is a member of Trump’s Florida clubs and a major donor to his campaigns. His company has previously done work for Trump properties. Rather than select from a competitive bidding field, the Trump administration gave this contract to a corrupt Trump donor and club member.

The larger problem has been the resurfacing of the pool. Trump wanted it brighter, failing to understand the purpose of a reflecting pool is to look at the reflection on the water, not the color of the bottom. There is speculation the shade he chose has increased the algae bloom, but given that bloom was inevitable, I’m not convinced this is a major factor and there are far larger issues with the new coating.

This contract was given to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, again without a bidding process. Trump said he was hiring them because they had done work for him in the past, but that does not appear to be true and we aren’t quite sure why this company was chosen. What we do know is their cost shot through the roof. Trump initially said it would cost $1.5 million. That cost exploded to $15 million and that was BEFORE the current issues.

I coated small materials under high vacuum but the mechanical process is quite similar to adding the polyurea coating they had on the pool. The difference is basically scale. There are numerous issues that can cause a coating to delaminate from its substrate and ultimately, which ones caused what happened don’t really matter.

The new polyurea coating began to peel off the bottom of the pool almost immediately.

So in addition to the massive green algae bloom, the new blue coating of the pool has simply been lifting off of the bottom its supposed to be attached to.

In a vacuum, this isn’t that big of a deal. The company definitely screwed up here, but construction screw-ups happen. A normal president is going to take responsibility and say that it will be fixed. And under a normal presidency, that would really be the end of the story. (There were issues when Obama did repairs. You likely didn’t hear about them as his reaction was… normal.)

Donald Trump is not a normal man.

Rather than take responsibility, Trump did what he does with every issue - blame Democrats and make up fictional vandals.

Trump has now frequently blamed Obama and Biden for the issues at the reflecting pool. He has not offered any explanation as to how this actually happened. Obama did oversee a $35 million project to renovate the pool. This was far more extensive and involved major changes to the actual foundation. Trump keeps lying about the cost of this project, lying that they spent over $100 million on it and lying that it also took place during the Biden administration. Aside from the blatant lie about the cost, those renovations have nothing at all to do with the fact that Trump’s contractor screwed up the coating and it isn’t adhering.

Incapable of admitting mistake, Trump says the issue with the coating delaminating is vandalism - that people are entering the reflecting pool and cutting the coating - to harm Donald Trump. He started blaming these vandals on a large gash. He initially said the gash was 100 feet long. Then he said it was 200 feet long. He’s now up to saying it’s a 300 foot gash. All of these figures are lies and there was no vandal cutting the lining.

There are cameras set up all over the National Mall, and not merely for security. As the government wants people to enjoy this space, there are cameras broadcasting 24/7 on the Internet. One of those cameras is mounted on the Washington Monument and aimed directly at the Reflecting Pool:

The Reflecting Pool is broadcast, to the world, at every moment of every day. If someone were to enter it and drag a knife the length of a football field, that person would have been shown on this public camera feed.

I hope I don’t have to tell you no such video exists.

As the president lies about vandals attacking the reflecting pool, law enforcement has worked to manufacture those vandals for him.

Davey Hearn is a former US Olympian who was biking by the pool and, like many now, was curious about the delaminating coating. He reached in to touch a piece of it which was still attached to the bottom.

And was shortly thereafter arrested for it. This man was arrested by federal agents for touching the bottom of the reflecting pool. While you aren’t supposed to enter the pool, that’s typically enforced by park police saying “Hey, please get out of the pool” rather than arrests. It’s been open for ice skating in the winters from time to time and you will find numerous photos of crowds, especially during large protests, in the pool. In short, this has never been a major offense until Donald Trump.

The government claims several other people have been arrested for touching the pool, though we don’t have details on them. The National Guard, deployed by Trump in DC for some time now with nothing to do, have taken to policing people dipping their hands into the water. Mobile surveillance towers have been deployed around the pool. Take in mind, there hasn’t BEEN any vandalism. The Park Police are appeasing Trump by pretending to crack down on the vandalism they know is not and has never happened.

Park Police have gone so far as to release a video of a woman they say they want to talk to about vandalizing the pool. Here is a frame from that video:

I’d normally insist you watch the full video in context but she sticks her hand in the water for a few seconds, as millions of people have done in this exact spot. That’s all.

The surveillance towers added to the pool have begun playing a recorded message about not loitering by the reflecting pool. (Amanda Moore does amazing coverage on such issues and you should follow her.)

Think on this for a moment. Our National Mall is a park. It’s a GORGEOUS park if you have not been. It’s a place I recommend every American try to visit once in their life. The Reflecting Pool, like most of the Mall, does not have any functional purpose. It looks pretty. And it’s nice to stand next to and look at. That’s it.

Another word for standing next to a work of art or park space and doing nothing other than admiring it is “loitering.”

Donald Trump is trying to stop people from even looking at the Reflecting Pool in a desperate and pathetic attempt to justify his lie that vandals have attacked it, a lie told to hide his own incompetence.

Does any of this ultimately matter all that much? No. But this story has caught on because it’s a perfect exemplar of how Trump runs every aspect of the government.

He doesn’t follow legally required processes. His decisions aren’t guided by law; they’re guided by gut feelings and personal relationships to criminals.

He does not have any idea of the time scale anything actually needs to take place on, whether that be fixing a pool or conducting the war in Iran.

And when he makes a mistake, which is often, he is mentally and emotionally incapable of accepting any modicum of responsibility. Instead he lashes out, blames Barack Obama, and invents fictional vandals who somehow cut huge cuts in national monuments without ever showing up on the cameras that run 24-7. Rather than admit a mistake, he sends federal agents to make bullshit arrests and to ban people from enjoying the freedom of walking by a pool which has no other purpose other than to be looked at.

There aren’t always consequences to this extreme narcissism. Other than cost overruns, there aren’t going to be any extreme consequences here. But things like this are the exception and not the rule.

He had no idea what he was doing starting the war in Iran. But he can’t acknowledge that which is part of why we are still stuck with the situation. He can’t admit when he loses an election so that means the Democrats must have cheated en masse, a lie that resulted in the worst terrorist attack on Congress in US history. (Trump has said the people damaging the pool are facing up to 10 years in prison. Compare that to Trump’s mass pardons of the terrorists who attacked the capitol on January 6th.)

What’s happening at the pool right now is indeed funny and trivial. It’s also indicative of Trump’s fascism. I certainly didn’t screw up the pool. It must have been antifa. Now no one can enjoy it.

This 4th of July, the reflecting pool will be either damaged or empty, with armed federal agents patrolling it to make sure no one stops to even LOOK at it. This will happen as the Trump administration drapes itself in the flag to talk about how much they love America and their opponents hate the country. It may not be of great import, but I can’t think of a better metaphor right now for Donald Trump’s incompetent and cruel administration.