What the Reflecting Pool Actually Reflects about Trump

An American icon becomes a metaphor for an incompetent and corrupt presidency.

Don Moynihan is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. Subscribe to his Substack, Can We Still Govern?

Different types of government failures grab our imagination: coverups, tragedies, personal moral failings, and corruption all lend themselves to narratives that humans naturally relate to.

But failures that can be visualized are hard to beat. They tell their own story. That is why I think the Reflecting Pool has caught the public imagination. Endless images and memes of the degradation of the Pool have swept through social media. The stakes seem simultaneously low enough to laugh about, but significant enough to gin up outrage. It is simultaneously funny and symbolic.

It would take a whole other post to highlight the best jokes, but this is certainly my favorite.

That said, I think the Reflecting Pool debacle is mirroring different aspects of Trump’s failure to govern in a competent and accountable way. Here are some themes.

1. From the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Trump

The Reflecting Pool can be considered an extension of the Lincoln Memorial. It was designed by the same architect, Henry Bacon, and completed in time for the dedication of the Memorial. Bacon designed it to connect America’s two greatest Presidents, Lincoln and Washington, using the pool to tie the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

Trump has made clear he is not repairing the Reflecting Pool, but making it his own, promising his vision will make it “the way it’s supposed to be. Much better than it ever was, actually.” The job of the reflecting pool is, well, to reflect its surrounds. It is not supposed be the defining feature, to grab the eye. Even Trump’s idealized and unrealized version of the Pool is a garish defilement of that purpose.

The Republican Party used to refer to itself as The Party of Lincoln. Whatever Lincoln stood for — his ending of slavery, civil war victory, personal integrity, vision and humility — seem distant. The Republican Party today is loyal to one man, and that is Trump.

Trump has repeatedly compared himself to Lincoln. Actual quote: “I believe I am treated worse.” He has made no secret of his goal of displacing Lincoln in the American pantheon. Defacing the Reflecting Pool is one reminder how little regard Trump has for his predecessor.

2. Ignore the Underlying Problem with a Superficial and Ugly Solution that Makes Things Worse

The Reflecting Pool, like America itself, has real problems. President Obama spent $30 million to fix those problems, but leaky pipes and algae — inherent in a shallow, sun-exposed pool — remain.

The National Parks Service drains and refills the pool each year. A real fix would require an estimated $100 million and more time. Trump had a different solution: A superficial repainting of the base of the Pool, which he labeled “American flag blue.” The underlying problems remain. Meanwhile, projects at the the already underfunded National Park Service are being cut to fund Trump’s D.C. spending spree.

3. Treat public institutions as personal property

Just as he coated the Oval Office with more faux-gold than an old-school Vegas casino, Trump wanted the Reflecting Pool not to work, but to be undeniably his.

This reflected the pattern of personalism. Trump has treated D.C .as his personal property. He demolished the East Wing of the White House, and paved over the Rose Garden, and pasted his name on the Kennedy Center without seeking any permission or approval.

Such approval processes ensure that the visual representations of the White House and government property are consistent with the historical traditions of the Capitol. But Trump casts them aside, underlining that we live under a personalist regime defined by the aesthetics of one man.

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4. Ignore the Rules, Reminding People Why Rules Exist

Trump handed out a no-bid contract to someone he knew, but someone without experience in this type of work. Can he do that, you ask? There are procurement rules to minimize risks of corruption. But Trump invoked an exemption for situations involving the risk of “serious injury, financial or other, to the government.”

In this case, there was no risk of serious injury, financial or other, to the government. Trump simply wanted the pool done for July 4th. The urgency exemption Trump invoked was made for less than 1% of National Park Service contract spending, and was also used for Trump’s confidential no-bid contract to the same firm that is building his ballroom. In their case, the urgent task is fixing ornamental foundations near the White House, which seems less than urgent and more like a way to funnel $17.4 million to a favored contractor.

The Reflecting Pool contracts are just one example of a massive increase in “urgency” exception spending this year, much of it in homeland security. In a normal year, this would be $3-6 billion (pandemic years are obvious exceptions). So far in 2026, it is $28 billion. What this means is that there is an extraordinary increase in money that avoids normal oversight, without an obvious pandemic-like emergency to justify it.

Many thanks to the amazing Abigail Haddad who generated this data

Government has rules, which make it slow. But it also has exemptions for truly urgent cases. Trump has viewed these exemptions as permission slips to do whatever he wants. Previous Presidents mostly took the rules seriously, or were told by their lawyers they needed to. Trump has selected lawyers on the criteria that they will ignore the rules. He has discovered that the American system of government, much like our system of private enterprise, gives a lot of room to someone willing to be sued.

Generally, I’m on the side of giving the executive branch more discretion. Most Americans would probably be fine with the notion that getting the Reflecting Pool in good shape for the 250th anniversary is a good idea, even if it involves bending the rules.

The problem is there was nothing that could be fixed on that timeline, and that Trump exercised his responsibility irresponsibly. And that is exactly what causes the public to become more skeptical of the use of discretionary power, fueling a demand for more rules to constrain it. Its a simple truth of public administration: bad actors fuel the creation of rules that constrain good actors from using power well.

5. Cronyism - the swamp that Trump built

As with other projects, like the new East Wing ballroom, the projected costs has ballooned. First it was $1.8 million, now it is $16.4 million.

This is one of the guys Trump gave a no-bid contract to.

Now, looks aren’t everything. You might look at me and say “that short Irish guy cannot dunk a basketball.” But … you’d be completely right.

OK, sometimes things are what they look like. And the contracting “process” here looks as murky as the Reflecting Pool.

The woman beside John Cafaro said she asked to have his picture taken with him because he looked like a comic-book villain. This was at an event at one of Trump’s golf courses. And she was right. Cafaro has two criminal guilty pleas, one for campaign finance violations, the other for bribing a Congressman. Cafaro has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump since 2020. He is the owner of Greenwater Services (I’m not kidding), who received a no-bid contract for a water-purification system for the Pool.

The other contract went to Atlantic Industrial Coatings. Trump said they had previously done work at his golf club: “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools. He looked at it. He called me up. He said, ‘Sir, we can do something on it.’”

Unbelievable indeed. Trump knows a guy. A large guy presumably, who calls him sir. As the Times reported, there was no evidence the firm had worked on even swimming pools, much less a complex project like the Reflecting Pool. The White House later said Trump had no personal relationship with the contractor. This is their first contract with the government.

Both contractors refused to talk about their work, or their connections with Trump, leaving the public in the dark and appropriately suspicious of cronyism.

6. Ignore the Experts

Back in early May, when the New York Times delivered an excellent account of the Reflecting Pool, they quoted a representative of the hot-tub industry who pointed out that painting the pool would not solve any problem, and the blue would soon be obscured by green algae.

A predictable mess! It’s actually worse than that. The new blue surface makes green algae the more certain outcome. Rosalina Stancheva Christova, a professor of aquatic ecology at George Mason University told NPR that the new surface made the underlying conditions more friendly to algae growth:

The new, darker interior surface is going to absorb more sunlight. It is going to result in water that’s warmer, and that ultimately is going to lead to more prolific algae growth.

The solution to the algae has been Cafaro’s “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology”, manually removing algae, pouring chemicals into the water, and now draining the pool again.

Thats right: Trump is literally draining the swamp that he created.

7. Accept No Blame. Scapegoat those Exposing Wrongdoing

It is not just the incompetence arising from a personalist regime that is galling; it is the demand to ignore the obvious evidence of failure. We waste time and energy arguing with serial liars who refuse to accept they can ever be held responsible. They use the resources of the federal government to leverage propaganda and threats. Abuse of legal power to silence dissent and threaten critics has been a staple of the Trump administration.

Trump is attempting to insist that his project was undermined not by mismanagement but by vandalism. In a Truth Social post, Trump insisted: “it came out great, except for the Vandalism, which we are now fixing.” When asked if contractors were to blame, Trump said:

No, no. We had vandalism. We had a 290, 300 foot slit, right through. Probably a box cutter, or a knife of some kind …. Five people are arrested and five people are under investigation.

Trump also claimed fertilizer was added to the water, with no evidence. A New York Times report revealed internal National Park Service documents from a week earlier mostly cast doubt about Trump’s claims. While they found cuts to sections of foam, these did not affect the blue sealant that is now peeling, or the algae foams. Just to underline how bizarre this is, Trump previously said the fix would last for 50 years, that the materials were so strong that “if you had a knife — I don’t want to give anyone ideas — if you had a knife you can’t even cut it.”

Another New York Times report revealed that the “nanobubblers” whose job was to prevent algae blooms were removed because they were deemed too unsightly to be present in the background during a UFC promotional event in front of the Lincoln Memorial. And then the algae returned.

PEOPLE ARE BEING ARRESTED IN ORDER TO COVER UP TRUMP’S FAILURES.

But people are really being arrested and ticketed. Jeanne Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., says that all such vandals will be fully prosecuted. Even if such prosecutions fail, they upend the lives of those involved, creating legal bills and career risks.

The site has become a tourist attraction in a novel way, as locals, tourists and reporters monitor the shitshow. Some touched and removed detached pieces of the surface material that did not adhere to the pool, a Dollar General version of grabbing a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

This who dared to touch or remove a symbol of Trump’s incompetence were arrested, and scapegoated for that incompetence. David Hearn took this picture of the floating materials, which many others have documented. He was immediately detained by the National Guard and charged with destruction of government property for, by his account, merely touching the materials.

Hearn, a former Olympian, said:

I reached in there, and I was able to grab the end of that flapping piece, the already peeling piece. It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t remove anything. … I didn’t vandalize anything. I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.

The stated purpose of placing the National Guard in D.C. was to reduce violent crime. New research shows that they have not done so. Their presence is symbolic, a reminder that people living in DC do not control their own city: Trump does.

Now the National Guard has been deployed to protect Trump’s mismanagement of the Reflecting Pool, telling tourists and even reporters that they will be arrested if they touch the pool. It is not clear what law, if any, the National Guard is enforcing. The dystopian images of a fenced-off and guarded pool speak for themselves.

The fence around the pool is nominally to prevent vandalism, but really to try to reduce transparency around one of the most visible of Trump’s failures. Automated surveillance machines announce to passersby that “Loitering is not permitted in this area. Please proceed to a designated location. Thank you for your cooperation.” Maybe Trump wants the Reflecting Pool to look good, but he does not seem to want any Americans to be able to see it in person.

Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis summed up the situation:

Large chunks of the Mall are now effectively an armed encampment surrounded by tall fencing. In some areas, crowds are herded through security lines to get to features that used to be easily accessible in previous years.

Hey, look. Do you want to find someone who actually vandalized the pool? What about the guy who drove a motorcade over a notoriously finicky and delicate surface prone to leaks?

All politicians like to shift blame when they can. But Trump is in a league of his own, frequently relying on conspiracy theories to turn ordinary people into villains. Now, he is treating people who are curious about or mocking his Reflecting Pool as Antifa, or at least the Antifa of MAGA imagination: a pervasive, destructive force.

This is what Trump has always done, of course. Pick a topic. Increase its salience. Demonize anyone against him. Birtherism. Immigration. The Wall. DEI. COVID. It is exhausting.

Is anyone still buying this? Can anyone still gin up the outrage to cheer the prosecution of a D.C. resident recording the desecration of a national monument? Is anyone still nodding along and saying, “Yes, the guy in the inflatable pink frog costume is the real threat.”

It is not only that all of this is exhausting. Trump is literally asking everyone to believe him, and not their lying eyes, about the degradation of one of the most potent visual symbols of America. Some will go along, no doubt, but most Americans will be left wondering when they can get a government actually committed to solving real problems, rather than creating them.