The Deflecting Pool

The dirty old man is lying again.

From The New York Times:

President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”

But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.

Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine.

The pool had been drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5. Four days later, Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.

The cause of the cuts was unclear. While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as “razor blade slashes” made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion. The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.

By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.

The workers had also discovered that some devices installed to kill algae were not working as intended, according to the documents. And enormous algae blooms had turned portions of the pool bright green instead of dark blue.

But on June 15, Mr. Trump was still declaring the renovation a success, telling reporters that “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

...On Tuesday, the president said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested. They did share the Park Police incident report, which said any suspect or suspects were unknown. The report also did not mention any damage to the pool’s blue sealant, nor did it describe any vandals dumping fertilizer.

...

The administration is setting up fencing around the site before the July 4 fireworks display for safety reasons, Ms. Martin said. But it’s going up earlier than originally planned because of what she called an “increase in vandalism by leftist activists.”

The Trump administration awarded two no-bid contracts for the Reflecting Pool renovations, bypassing the legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what it called an urgent need to complete the project for events around the nation’s 250th birthday.

Even as this smelly, old bigot's brain rots in his skull, he still retains that one characteristic which unites all Republicans:   the categorical refusal to take responsibility for their own fuck ups at which they keep getting caught red-handed over and over again.

Burn The Lifeboats