Trump marched in to transform DC’s famed reflection pool. The result is just like his presidency
Idea
A historian once told me that the presidency would purify Donald Trump to his core.
This core apparently consists of trillions of microscopic organisms that suck up all the oxygen and endanger life around them.
This essence is slimy, smelly and cruel, as reflected in the mass of algae that infests the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The president had promised an “American flag blue” shine, but algae created green streaks that marred the US$14 million ($20 million) renovation of the water mirror.
Algae is the perfect metaphor for our impulsive president and his impulsive and solipsistic management style.
“It looks like a Rothko,” said Amanda Aldous, a 36-year-old teacher who looked at the reflecting pool as she guided her middle school students around the Seattle suburb on Wednesday. “I think any biologist could have told this would happen.”
This is the hallowed ground where Marian Anderson serenaded crowds after being kicked out of Constitution Hall because of her race, and where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to an even larger crowd around the 620-foot pool.
National Park Service workers in swim boats were sucking up dead algae that had spread across the bottom Wednesday. The popsicles’ refrigeration helped them withstand the hot, humid weather where algae thrives.
On Thursday, the Interior Department claimed to have destroyed poisonous flowers while driving Barack Obama around to please his boss.
“Advanced nanobubble technology very effectively killed the algae that had plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening since 1922 – most famously the Obama reopening,” the department said on social platform X. “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is currently sweeping up dead algae that remains at the bottom of parts of the Reflecting Pool – just like the Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
Reports of Trump’s victories are still early, with Iran’s thorny issues and reflection pool. Iran boasts about Trump’s bad deal. Senate Republicans, who normally don’t have the courage to challenge Trump, scoff at this. And the hydrogen peroxide that park workers use to kill algae is stripping the “American flag blue” paint that Trump just said should be applied to the bottom of the pool.
To do Trump justice, many parts of the capital needed to be renovated, and he became the first president to restore beautiful statues and fountains that had fallen into disrepair.
When I was a young woman working for a bond company in the ’30s, my mother would stop at Meridian Hill Park in Columbia Heights on her way home from work. But the magnificent Italian Renaissance park he loved later became dry and miserable. For the past seven years, there has been no water in the cascading fountain, the tallest fountain in North America, or in the tranquil pool beneath it.
Channeling the Wollman ice rink into a triumphant rebuilding in Central Park, Trump cleaned up Meridian Hill Park and turned on the faucets, as he did with Union Station’s statue and majestic fountain.
But for every laudable effort, there are plenty of abominations, like the massive ballroom plans, the selfish Arc de Trump, the cheesy Mar-a-Lago patio where Jackie’s Rose Garden used to be, and the desecration of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (now halted by a federal judge). (Last week, the center’s facade, where workers removed Trump’s name, was still covered with a striped cloth. “John” was on one side and “formation” was on the other.)
Trump wants to demolish Hains Point, where generations of D.C. kids rode bikes and played miniature golf, for a private golf course.
Even when Trump begins with a glint of truth that many iconic spots in D.C. have been allowed to shamefully deteriorate, he goes overboard in such a Trumpian way that he often ends up making things worse.
He orders bulldozers in the middle of the night and arrogantly refuses to seek input from planning experts or Congress in this meticulously and symbolically landscaped federal city.
This habit of unilaterally rushing in, refusing to consult anyone except sycophants, insisting when we can see the results are not great, also led to the debacle of Elon Musk and DOGE and the humiliation in Iran.
Disrupting the classical style and perfect proportions of a Paris-inspired city design, he imposes a rococo, Brobdingnagian taste on our fairy-tale buildings. Trump shows favoritism on contracts and waste, and for all his gush about the BEST, he allows inefficiency to thrive.
It’s a difficult journey as the president, a mad urban planner, struggles to save the lives of Washington and Washingtonians.
When those he doesn’t consult complain about misguided plans, he harshly criticizes them on Truth Social and insists everything will be AMAZING. As rival developer Leona Helmsley once said of Trump, “I wouldn’t believe him if his language was notarized.”
Babylon Bee He posted a satirical video suggesting that if a female president was volatile—starting foreign wars, trade wars, and petty squabbles—and focused on trinkets and shoes, she would be forever belittled.
Many Americans miss the days when we built big things. So, at first glance, it seems appealing for this crazy president to crush the bureaucracy and get this job done. But as always with Trump, you will eventually have to accept that he is incompetent, corrupt, shabby and just an all-around terrible person.
This article was first published on: New York Times.
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