Telex: Trump promised a quick and cheap solution to an expensive and complicated problem. It was the result

Donald Trump last November announcedthat the famous reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington will be renovated. He urged everyone to take a good look at the pool “because they won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence for long.” However, the renovation of one of the most well-known attractions in the American capital, featured in countless American films, did not go as he wanted, and according to his critics, in recent weeks it has directly become a symbol of Trump’s own incompetence.

“Trump wanted a monument to himself in Washington and finally got one with the pool of mirrors, the perfect metaphor for kleptocracy, failure, incompetence, total chaos” – he said for the Guardian, writer Sidney Blumenthal, former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Or, as one viewer put it to the newspaper, Trump is the opposite of King Midas, under whose hand everything turned to gold: “Everything he (Trump) touches turns to shit.”

Trying to shape Washington in his own image as much as possible, the president devoted a lot of attention to the mirror pool, which he regularly brought up when speaking to reporters. Specifically He mentioned it 42 times on your social media page and at least twice personally visited to inspect the works starting at the end of April. He promised that he would fix the pool in such a way that it would not be necessary to touch it for fifty years.

In comparison, the renovation was barely finished, the pool with a blue bottom first turned green from the spreading algae, then the freshly deposited paint started to come off, the nanobubble algae removal devices failed, and a dead duck was even photographed in the water.

As crowds of disaster tourists flocked to the site and the American press began to focus on the mirror pool, Trump began to blame the problems on “crazy radical left-wing” vandals without any evidence. Police and National Guardsmen were sent to the pool, who started arresting people who ventured too close to the water and often reached into it, and finally closed it off with a fence.

Wednesday then confirmed it an official of the National Park Service that the film at the bottom of the pool was “cut with a sharp knife or razor”, which also caused damage to the seal, he wrote the AP. This was also reported to the police on June 9. However, according to reviewers, there were many more problems with the pool.

Trump expected to be able to divert attention from the Iran war with what was promised to be an easy success. Instead, he chose a solution that does not solve the basic problem of corruption, he gave the job to an inexperienced contractor without public procurement, and “the whole thing started to stink of corruption” – he said George Derek Musgrove, professor of history at the University of Maryland, told the Guardian. Then, to cover it all up, he started arresting people “for touching a layer of peeling blue paint.” This, he said, only proved that he was using the justice system as a weapon “to cover up his own stupidity and mistakes,” Musgrove said.

A quick and cheap solution to an expensive and complicated problem

Built in the early 1920s between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the huge 619-meter-long and 51-meter-wide concrete pool that reflects them caused problems from the start. The pool, which was built in the marshy area without a proper foundation, has cracked in several places due to the subsidence of the ground, and water is constantly leaking through the gaps between the concrete blocks, approximately sixty million liters per year. Meanwhile, the pipe system that transports the water to the pool through a filter system is full of cracks and is also constantly leaking.

In addition, there is the hard-to-solve problem of algae growth: the shallow water, only half a meter deep, is an excellent breeding ground for them, especially on hot summer days. Hans W. Paerl, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina, told The Atlantic he saidthat if he had to design an algae farm, he would do just like the mirror pool: a huge, shallow body of water, full of nutrients. And because of the dark blue paint, the temperature of the water only increased.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, the government spent more than $35 million to fix the problems, but to no avail. Within a month the pool was green again with algae and leaking water as before. According to experts speaking to the American press, the only way to solve the problems is to replace the pipe system, which would cost more than a hundred million dollars.

In the end, Trump chose a cheaper solution to beautify the mirror pool, in which the fact that the bottom of the pool was painted blue played a prominent role, but it was not as cheap as he first said. Trump at the end of April he claimedthat in one week and with a budget of one and a half million dollars (approx. HUF 465 million), they can solve the renovation of the mirror pool, which will be so good that there will be no problems with it for “30, 40, 50 years” afterwards. In early June already said that “you don’t even have to touch it for a hundred years”. He also said he did not accept estimates that the renovation would take more than three years and cost more than $300 million.

Instead of the announced one and a half million dollars, in the end, more than ten times that amount was paid to two companies that received the work without the appropriate public procurement procedures. Trump at first he saidthat he personally chose one of them because they did a good job on a swimming pool at one of his golf clubs – he later claimed that he didn’t even know the company.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based company, ended up getting $14.5 million for the job, according to a New York Times article, and more than twice the usual 20 percent could work profitably. The Times found no evidence that the ostensibly non-swimming pool business ever worked at any of Trump’s golf clubs. His task was to fill the gaps between the concrete blocks and waterproof the bottom of the pool. The work was also offered to a company that worked on the previous renovation, but they did not accept it because under the conditions required by Trump was deemed unfeasible the renovation.

Another company, Ohio’s Greenwaters Services, received $1.7 million, also without a public procurement process, to supply the pool with a so-called nanobubble system, which can be used to prevent algae growth – wrote the Times. The company is owned by one of Trump’s Florida neighbors and longtime supporters, John J. Cafaro, who was arrested in Ohio in 2002. convicted of briberyand later pleaded guilty to illegal campaign donations.

One or two of the four equipment installed by the company did not work properly due to problems with the generators. Meanwhile problems came also in relation to the work of the other company: the blue paint was not an even color, and at first the seals placed between the concrete blocks did not live up to expectations.

Dirty green instead of pure blue

The renovation of the pool was finished by the beginning of June, but soon after it was filled with water, the algae reappeared and the whole pool turned green and so opalescent that you couldn’t see the bottom. All this did not come as a surprise to the experts, who already at the end of May I was warnedthat without replacing the pipe system, it is inevitable that the algae in the shallow water will start to proliferate again in the high summer heat. “Painting will not solve the problem” – he said at the beginning of May, Tim Auerhahn, president of the swimming pool industry consulting firm Aquatic Council, told the New York Times.

In response, an army of workers flooded the pool, began pouring hydrogen peroxide into it to kill the algae, then began scrubbing the bottom and pumping the filthy green water into the sewer system. However, another problem arose: the paint or between the concrete blocks material used to cover gaps in several places began to separate from the bottom of the pool and floated to the surface in large pieces. Then they followed the dead ducks the in a pool and around it.

The Ministry of the Interior claimed last Friday that the algae had been killed and that the water was crystal clear, but even then you could see green spots everywhere. According to an investigation by the Atlantic the algae that appeared after the renovation were indeed destroyed with hydrogen peroxide. However, according to experts speaking to the newspaper and PBS, this they made room for another algaeand it started to spread.

Trump does it all with vandalism he justified. The president he claimedthat the paint was cut with a knife – this was then confirmed by the National Park Service, which could have been the result of deliberate vandalism. Trump also talked about “destructive chemicals” as well as fertilizers cast into the water to directly promote algae growth.

Police officers and members of the National Guard began patrolling around the pool, surveillance cameras were installed, and finally on Tuesday with a fence they started to surround “due to vandalism by left-wing activists”.

Meanwhile, Trump announced that five people had already been arrested for vandalism and he threatened to do sothat they could face up to ten years in prison for vandalizing federal buildings.

One of the people arrested is former Olympian David Hearn, who he says was taken into custody on charges of damaging government property after he stopped by the pool while riding his bike and fished out a chipped piece of paint. The man for the Washington Post he statedthat he didn’t destroy, break or take anything, and by the time he realized what was happening, he was already in handcuffs. Hearn is scheduled to appear in court in early July. Your lawyer absolutely called it baseless the charges against him: “It’s not a federal crime to touch water.”

Trump said on his social media that they will be forced drain the water again from the pool to be done the necessary repairs. The president has yet another tirade said about “the mirror pool is fantastic, I just got photos and it’s beautiful”. That day, a huge patch of green algae could still be seen in the middle of the pool.

We have updated our article with the findings of the National Park Service.