Fourteen million dollars.
To dye the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American Flag Blue” — a shade personally chosen by Donald Trump — just in time for America’s 250th birthday.
The most powerful man on Earth looked at the pool in front of which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered “I Have a Dream” and decided that the nation’s most urgent emergency was the color of the water.
Initial estimate: $1.8 million.
Final bill: more than $14 million.
Seven times higher, for a no-bid contract awarded to a Virginia company that had previously worked on a swimming pool at one of Trump’s golf clubs. Because when you need an expert on national monuments, obviously you call the guy who fixed the pool at the country club.
Before Trump, naturally, there was the flood.
According to the administration, the Reflecting Pool was “broken and disgusting,” ruined by “failed and extremely costly” attempts under Obama and Biden. Trump, the self-proclaimed master builder, would fix it “for good.”
Then, on June 5, he put his signature on the proclamation on Truth Social: this was not mere paint, he said, but highly sophisticated, industrial-strength material, applied by very talented people, capable of lasting one hundred years.
One hundred years.
It lasted until the first real heat.
The algae took over everything.
Within days, the most photographed monument in America had turned into a tributary of the Amazon River: fluorescent green water, foam on the surface, and the feeling that at any moment the back of a caiman might emerge between one algae bloom and the next.
Meanwhile, from the bottom of the pool, strips of the famous “American Flag Blue” coating began to peel away.
All that was missing were piranhas and a National Geographic crew filming a documentary on the mysterious northward migration of tropical river life.
Then came the patchwork ballet.
First, National Park Service workers with skimmers, fishing algae out of a national monument as if they were scooping overcooked pasta out of a pot.
When that did not quite produce the desired miracle, the final weapon was deployed: bottles of hydrogen peroxide poured by hand into the Reflecting Pool.
At some point, perhaps, someone in the entire administration might have remembered that dark surfaces absorb heat, that heat warms water, and that warm water is paradise for algae.
Perhaps someone even said it.
But why listen to science when you have branding?
The greatest builder of all time.
A $14 million patriotic makeover.
A “100-year” solution.
And after a few hot days, America’s sacred reflecting pool became a green swamp with peeling blue paint.
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