A truck-bed coating company, a UFC birthday party, and an algae bloom: Inside Trump’s $14 million Reflecting Pool fiasco

President Trump’s high-profile renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has devolved into a public embarrassment, with an “unproven” nanobubbler technology failing to stop an algae bloom while the coating beneath it now appears to be leaching toxic chemicals into the water. The saga — full of botched timelines, unverified vandalism claims and now toxicity concerns — has become an unlikely metaphor for the administration’s broader instinct to paper over problems rather than fix them. A reflecting pool in more ways than one. Rushed a $14 million makeover Trump ordered the historic pool between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument repainted “American flag blue” ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary, at a cost that ballooned from $13.1 million to over $14 million. Contractors used products from Rhino Linings, a truck-bed coating company, including a barrel of “RHINO 405 A Thixotropic High Viscosity Epoxy Resin,” which OSHA data sheets flag as toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects and as a strong irritant. According to The New York Times, crews under a rushed deadline tied to a UFC birthday event for Trump at the White House (he’s a Gemini) removed the pool’s “nanobubblers” — devices meant to keep the water oxygenated — before the project was finished. The algae strikes back Within days of the pool being refilled on June 9, patches of vivid green algae bloomed across the surface, particularly near the Lincoln and World War II memorials. Interior Department spokesperson Katie Martin initially dismissed it as “residual” algae from supply lines that had been dormant during construction, insisting the president had “permanently resolved” issues that had stumped the Obama and Biden administrations. When that explanation wore thin, officials pivoted to touting “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” alongside hydrogen peroxide dumps a