Trump's Reflecting Pool mess perfectly mirrors his presidency | Opinion

President Donald Trump made two claims about his plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, when he made the announcement back in April – that it would be cheap, and that it would be beautiful.

“A fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time, and you’ll get a better product,” Trump said on April 23.

Now, days before the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, it seems that the changes have been anything but. The paint job is botched – large strips of blue are peeling up and floating in the water. The pesky algae blooms have returned, even though Trump claimed he was remedying them. Multiple ducks have died. And to top it all off, the project has already cost nearly $16 million – way over the $1.5 million he initially said it would cost.

Democrats are pointing fingers and laughing at the objective failure of Trump’s little project. Republicans have been claiming that the rest of the country is overreacting. But what everyone seems to be missing is that the Reflecting Pool is probably the clearest metaphor for Trump’s presidency that we’ve gotten since Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made claims about voter fraud without offering proof ‒ at a news conference staged at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia in 2020.

Much like Trump’s presidency, it’s an absolute catastrophe.

Republicans want you to believe everything is fine and normal

After all, nothing was particularly wrong with the Reflecting Pool in the first place. Sure, there was an algae problem to begin with, but what body of water doesn’t deal with that? Yet to Trump, this was an affront to the country itself. It was his duty to fix this ahead of the Independence Day celebration.

This is Trump’s modus operandi – take something that is flawed, yes, but not necessarily broken, and gut it. He did that to federal agencies with the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025. He’s done it with Medicaid and Medicare. He's made the deficit worse.

With the Reflecting Pool, he got a random company with a questionable past to do the job – kind of like how he’s appointed completely unqualified MAGA loyalists to important Cabinet positions.

Now, it’s an ugly mess – a bigger eyesore than Washington could have ever anticipated.

And to top it all off, much like Trump’s previous schemes, it’s way more expensive to the American taxpayers than he initially claimed it would be.

Of course, this is all getting blamed on the left. Trump claims that radical leftists used a sharp object to leave a large gash in the liner of the Reflecting Pool.

All of this is being done solely to feed Trump’s ego, so that he can put his stamp of approval on every last thing that the government touches. He’s done that with the Kennedy Center. He’s doing it by putting his face on our passports. Much like his business empire prior to this, he thinks that putting his name and “personal touch” on everything is the solution.

It's also all being done with the embrace of Republicans who would have us believe it's not that big a deal. Right.

Don't forget that it's all a reflection of Trump and Republican rule

Like the "Scooby-Doo" gang unmasking a monster at the end of each episode, the Creature from the Green Reflecting Pool was just Trump all along. And you know what? It makes sense.

I don’t have to tell you that Trump is an absolute charlatan who has fooled enough people to take over the country and is now doing everything in his power to keep the ruse up. He doesn’t care about how much it costs. He doesn’t care if it’s a nonissue. He will change things for the worse, then ask us all to grin and pretend it’s not an affront to the nation we call home.

With the Reflecting Pool, he doesn’t even want to admit that there’s a problem – aside from, of course, blaming radical leftists. A White House spokesperson told multiple news outlets that the Reflecting Pool is “crystal clear and reflecting perfectly” on June 25, the day before I wrote this column.

It’s a perfect reflection of something, all right.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky:@sarapequeno.bsky.social