What the Reflecting Pool debacle says about Trump and his presidency - Tumulty WaPo
When the going gets rough in politics, mishap becomes metaphor. Rarely has that been truer than with President Donald Trump’s botched makeover of the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool, which has indeed become a reflection — of his priorities, his impulses and his assertion of authority and power in his second term. On an iconic site where some of the most stirring moments in the nation’s history have taken place, the American public is seeing images of Gatorade-green water filled with algae, floating peels of paint in a shade the president dubbed “American flag blue” — and even a dead duck.
The contrast from what Trump promised in April, when he announced his plan to repair and refurbish the pool, has been nightmarish. Its problems go back to its creation. The pool was constructed without underlying support in the 1920s on reclaimed marshland; the swamp has slowly been taking it back ever since. Citing his background as a master builder, Trump quoted rejected estimates that repairing the pool would take 3½ years and more than $300 million.
Instead, “our job will take one week and will cost about a million and a half dollars and people said, ‘Wow,’” the president told reporters. “And here’s the only difference. … The difference is, this is much better. This will last 30, 40, 50 years.” The price tag quickly escalated to its current $14 million, and the time frame became six weeks. Trump, as is his wont, bypassed normal, legally required processes and awarded no-bid contracts to vendors with whom he had previous ties. The administration claimed the urgency was justified because the work had to get done by America’s 250th birthday, though that deadline also appears to have gone by the wayside. All of which is an object lesson as to why the procedures that Trump has disdained exist in the first place.
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That legacy-building impulse has expressed itself as an urge to put his name, his image and his brand on whatever he can in Washington. When a reporter asked him last year about a triumphal arch he was building near Arlington National Cemetery and whom he was building it for, Trump had a ready answer: “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.” Privately, Trump has also mused about the possibility of topping the arch with a replica of his own fist, raised as he cried “Fight! Fight! Fight!” after a 2024 assassination attempt, according to an account in “Regime Change,” a newly published book about his second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
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Trump has also pressed for New York’s Penn Station and the Washington area’s Dulles International Airport to be named for him, at one point briefly threatening to hold up already appropriated funding for a commuter tunnel between New Jersey and New York City to get his way. Under a Florida law passed earlier this year, Palm Beach International Airport, roughly five miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, will officially be renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport in July.
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