Things big and small are going bad for Donald Trump. He’s losing bad enough on land and at sea in Iran, but worse at a pool back in D.C. One might say the growing algae debacle on the National Mall left him up shit's creek without a paddle, and so he had an Olympic canoer arrested.
Trump painted himself into an American Flag Blue corner with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, so somebody has to pay. Now arrests are being made. It’s another sign of how far the republic has fallen that the biggest reaction to throwing folks in jail to distract from presidential fuckups is laughter. But here we are. The Ponzi Scheme of Chaos rolls on.
To recap: Trump had bogusly declared that an urgent situation existed with the Reflecting Pool—or, as he also called the formerly regal body of water on the National Mall, the “the Reflecting Pond” and “the Reflecting Lake at the Lincoln Monument”—so he could give no-bid contracts to Republican Party loyalists. Among the folks hired to basically put the pool back in the same shape it was already in was John J. Cafaro, a cartoonish looking man whose résumé, The New York Times reported, shows convictions for bribery and illegal campaign contributions. Cafaro’s pool company is called Greenwater Services, and, sure enough, he’s delivered green water to the National Mall.
As revelations about the dirty deals trickled out along with all the algae-loaded green water, a flotilla of peeling blue paint also came to the pool surface. Trump bogusly declared that the poorly painted pool and its detached bottom had been ruined not by him and his unqualified donor flunkies, or the jugs of corrosive chemicals dumped into the water earlier in the week, but by vandals. The National Guard members patrolling the mall in war costumes now had marching orders from their commander in chief: Find some vandals!
And so they did.
A viral Instagram video showed the guardsmen and several law enforcement agencies swoop in over the weekend to take down a cyclist in green spandex. The man in the green suit, identified as 67-year old David Hearn of nearby Bethesda, Md., had been spotted reaching into the pool and touching a chunk of paint, according to reports. Hearn told the Washington Post that all the paint he touched had peeled before he rode over to the pool. (Hearn also bragged that he’d ridden a bike 52 miles before showing up.)
“I reached in there, and I was able to grab the end of that flapping piece, the already peeling piece,” he said. “It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t remove anything.”
Hearn's story rings awfully true, since photos of globs of paint floating in the pool had been circulating on social media well before Hearn finished his mid-day ride. Hearn was held for five hours by the National Guardsmen and their brothers in arms in Trump’s multi-agency paint-chip task force before being issued a summons for destruction of government property and released. He’s supposed to appear in court on July 9.
I couldn’t find much about Hearn’s politics, though he did show up to a public Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial in 2020. But he is a former world-class canoeist who rowed for Team USA at multiple Olympics as “Davey Hearn.” So call it D.C.’s newest whitewater investigation.
And now Hearn has company: Based on news reports at least five people have been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the pool. Quoting Trump has long felt like malpractice, but: he celebrated the arrests by accusing the alleged vandals with carving a “250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade.” There are security cameras monitoring the Reflecting Pool and all the surrounding grounds at all times, so here’s betting all of the president’s pronouncements will be disproved and none of the arrestees will be found guilty of vandalism. Then they’ll drain the pool and all the work done by the crony contractors will have to be done all over again on the public dime.
But for now, there’s a dead duck. Sad as hell. But, trying to end on a high note, the duck will no longer have to hear about the Reflecting Lake at the Lincoln Monument.
