Without asking anyone who knew what they were doing, or getting permission from Congress for spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on it, President Donald Trump decided to award no-bid contracts to some of his cronies to drain and resurface the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial to make it a different shade of blue. A supposedly new algae-suppression system was also installed.
That went about as well as you’d expect. Soon after the reflecting pool was refilled, one of the biggest algae blooms it had seen in years turned the water a sickly green color. Days later, the new “American flag blue” liner began peeling off from the bottom in large chunks.
“We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump lied on his personal social media platform. Trump blames every problem that exists in the world (especially the ones he himself caused) on immigrants, nonviolent protesters, and/or Democrats.
No one vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool but Trump himself. Despite another lie in which he claimed that “multiple” people had been arrested for vandalizing the reflecting pool, only one guy seems to have actually been arrested for it, a three-time Olympian who, out of curiosity, bent down to feel a part of the liner that had already peeled off.
You can look for yourself to see if that meets D.C.’s legal definition of vandalism (hint: it doesn’t). Right-wing influencers and media personalities quickly moved to repeat the president’s lie that nefarious left-wing forces were responsible for messing up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a further attempt to bend reality to line up with Trump’s obvious falsehood.
It’s not even a good lie. “Vandals messed up the reflecting pool [right as the work the shady contractors I handpicked began to fall apart]” is about as believable as a 10-year-old claiming a bird swooped in and stole his little brother’s cupcake.
Have you been to the Lincoln Memorial? The reflecting pool is huge, and there is nowhere to park near it. Trump said the vandals he made up “poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool,” which would mean, I guess, that to have had such profound effects these masters of stealth would have had to, unnoticed, wheel in dozens of 55-gallon drums hundreds of yards by hand truck.
The hydrochloric acid concentration in your stomach is about 5,000 parts per million at the lower end of the spectrum. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool holds about 6.5 million gallons of water. So if we want to get up to stomach acid concentrations, we’re talking about wheeling in 32,500 gallons of hydrochloric acid, or about 600 55-gallon drums. But let’s say these ingenious vandals found something even more potent than hydrochloric acid, and were somehow able to obtain a whole lot of it. Maybe then, allowing for extra time for this super chemical to work, let’s just imagine they only had to truck in 200 barrels. It’s still pretty amazing that nobody noticed this.
Isn’t it perhaps a little more likely that the guy known for shoddy construction projects simply oversaw another shoddy construction project? Occam’s razor, and all.
Only one person vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool: Donald J. Trump. He vandalized it by circumventing the correct legal process for major federal projects like this.
And what else would you expect? Trump thinks he is going to be remembered as a builder in Washington, but he is going to be remembered as the city’s vandal in chief.
Instead of a quiet place to contemplate outside the Lincoln Memorial, we now have an unsightly mess. Instead of the East Wing of the White House, we now have a hole in the ground. January 6 was reminiscent of the sacking of Rome that gave rise to the very word “vandalism.”
Worse than any building he’s defaced or monument he’s destroyed is the way Trump treats democracy itself. All of the physical manifestations of his vandalism are outgrowths of his refusal to govern in adherence with constitutional principles and the rule of law. If he would seek the approval of Congress before destroying a federal landmark, if he would bid out jobs rather than trading them as political favors, if he would try to pass a law instead of issuing a dictate, then we would not have all these other problems. Alas, vandals ask for neither permission nor forgiveness.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post ‘We’ve Had Some Real Problems With Vandalism,’ Says Washington, D.C.’s Vandal In Chief appeared first on Above the Law.
Without asking anyone who knew what they were doing, or getting permission from Congress for spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on it, President Donald Trump decided to award no-bid contracts to some of his cronies to drain and resurface the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial to make it a different shade of blue. A supposedly new algae-suppression system was also installed.
That went about as well as you’d expect. Soon after the reflecting pool was refilled, one of the biggest algae blooms it had seen in years turned the water a sickly green color. Days later, the new “American flag blue” liner began peeling off from the bottom in large chunks.
“We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump lied on his personal social media platform. Trump blames every problem that exists in the world (especially the ones he himself caused) on immigrants, nonviolent protesters, and/or Democrats.
No one vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool but Trump himself. Despite another lie in which he claimed that “multiple” people had been arrested for vandalizing the reflecting pool, only one guy seems to have actually been arrested for it, a three-time Olympian who, out of curiosity, bent down to feel a part of the liner that had already peeled off.
You can look for yourself to see if that meets D.C.’s legal definition of vandalism (hint: it doesn’t). Right-wing influencers and media personalities quickly moved to repeat the president’s lie that nefarious left-wing forces were responsible for messing up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a further attempt to bend reality to line up with Trump’s obvious falsehood.
It’s not even a good lie. “Vandals messed up the reflecting pool [right as the work the shady contractors I handpicked began to fall apart]” is about as believable as a 10-year-old claiming a bird swooped in and stole his little brother’s cupcake.
Have you been to the Lincoln Memorial? The reflecting pool is huge, and there is nowhere to park near it. Trump said the vandals he made up “poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool,” which would mean, I guess, that to have had such profound effects these masters of stealth would have had to, unnoticed, wheel in dozens of 55-gallon drums hundreds of yards by hand truck.
The hydrochloric acid concentration in your stomach is about 5,000 parts per million at the lower end of the spectrum. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool holds about 6.5 million gallons of water. So if we want to get up to stomach acid concentrations, we’re talking about wheeling in 32,500 gallons of hydrochloric acid, or about 600 55-gallon drums. But let’s say these ingenious vandals found something even more potent than hydrochloric acid, and were somehow able to obtain a whole lot of it. Maybe then, allowing for extra time for this super chemical to work, let’s just imagine they only had to truck in 200 barrels. It’s still pretty amazing that nobody noticed this.
Isn’t it perhaps a little more likely that the guy known for shoddy construction projects simply oversaw another shoddy construction project? Occam’s razor, and all.
Only one person vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool: Donald J. Trump. He vandalized it by circumventing the correct legal process for major federal projects like this.
And what else would you expect? Trump thinks he is going to be remembered as a builder in Washington, but he is going to be remembered as the city’s vandal in chief.
Instead of a quiet place to contemplate outside the Lincoln Memorial, we now have an unsightly mess. Instead of the East Wing of the White House, we now have a hole in the ground. January 6 was reminiscent of the sacking of Rome that gave rise to the very word “vandalism.”
Worse than any building he’s defaced or monument he’s destroyed is the way Trump treats democracy itself. All of the physical manifestations of his vandalism are outgrowths of his refusal to govern in adherence with constitutional principles and the rule of law. If he would seek the approval of Congress before destroying a federal landmark, if he would bid out jobs rather than trading them as political favors, if he would try to pass a law instead of issuing a dictate, then we would not have all these other problems. Alas, vandals ask for neither permission nor forgiveness.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post ‘We’ve Had Some Real Problems With Vandalism,’ Says Washington, D.C.’s Vandal In Chief appeared first on Above the Law.
