The Reflecting Pool Finally Reflects Something Honest
How a Botched $14.7 Million Renovation Became a Felony, a Scapegoat, and a Perfect Portrait of Trump-Era Government
The pool was supposed to reflect Lincoln. Instead, it reflected the administration.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has finally done what it was designed to do: reflect the government standing over it.
The Trump administration spent roughly $14.7 million renovating the pool before America’s 250th birthday. The job was hurried. The new blue coating began peeling. Trump blamed vandals, because in his Washington, defective workmanship is apparently less believable than a vast conspiracy against decorative sealant.
Then federal prosecutors found their culprit: David Hearn, a 67-year-old, three-time Olympic canoeist who stopped during a bike ride and touched a loose piece of coating. He said it was already peeling and that he let go when a park worker told him to. Prosecutors nevertheless charged him with felony property destruction.
Jeanine Pirro’s office treated the loose coating as though Hearn had taken a chisel to Lincoln himself. The administration had its vandal, its prosecution, and its explanation for why a multimillion-dollar renovation was coming apart.
Unfortunately, the pool kept reflecting.
The Justice Department has now moved to dismiss the case after learning that the coating failure resulted from flawed installation during a rushed project. In other words, the suspect was not the cyclist. It was the contractor.
That sequence captures Trump-era governing with remarkable efficiency. Order something flashy. Demand it quickly. Ignore the obvious problems. Blame an enemy. Find someone to punish. Discover the facts only after the courtroom paperwork is filed.
The funniest detail is that this happened at the Reflecting Pool, a monument built around the concept of seeing what is actually there. Trump saw sabotage. Pirro saw a felony. Contractors saw an invoice. Everyone else saw paint falling off.
America paid nearly $15 million for the renovation, but the clearest result came free of charge: a perfect reflection of an administration more interested in assigning blame than accepting responsibility.
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That Trump sequence is pretty much dead on. It is easy to imagine that it was and is his modus operandi in all his business and personal dealings
IF I was a betting person, I'd wager that this regime KNEW BEFORE Mr. Hearn arrived 'on the scene' that the Dept. of the Interior had reported what the actual cause was. Then they waited for someone to blame. Seemingly, nearly everything about this regime honestly shows how delicate, tenuous, frangible, dainty and frail the institutions AND the corrupt crooks installed to run them are. Or to phrase it another way, There is No There, THERE!
IMO, IF we are able to restore our country to a stronger democracy and the physical damage to it, we should commemorate this dark period by naming the nearest Sewage and Water treatment facility* the Donald J Trump and MAGA Memorial Reflection Pools.
* These are some of the most important and necessary Public Services in 'Murica!
I could go so far as to call every single treatment facility in the nation by such a moniker. Much better than airports, as not everyone uses airports...