Washington had a spring in its step on Wednesday, November 4, the day after the election. Democrats had swept across the nation, from sea to shining sea, liberating territory that had long suffered under Republican rule.

Texas!

Kansas!

Mississippi!

All freed by a new generation of Democrats in a burst of millennial optimism. Following the example of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, these were media-savvy, punch-back politicians with a hopeful, populist vision for the future.

I had spent previous, calamitous elections (2016, 2024) drunk but this time, I was too nervous to imbibe. Because if democracy lost, what then? Where would I go? No tempting of fate at a victory party.

Instead, I white-knuckled it at home, raw-dogging the results, expecting disappointment and wondering how this country would survive resurgent fascism.

Instead, it was all over by eight o’clock. Astonishing results poured in as the Democrats won all the swing states and so much more, including control of the House and Senate. The margin in the Senate is so big that it renders John Fetterman (Vichy-PA) completely irrelevant.

Americans dumped some of the worst people on the planet, like Roger Marshall, the Kansas Senator who jailed his patients for failing to pay and Vivek Ramaswamy, who used a woman’s childhood trauma for a campaign ad.

Even better: Elon Musk spent $500 million (!) on the election only to see Texas go blue! Buc-cee’s will now be halal and shawarma law will be mandatory in the Lone Star State.

The morning after the election, I went to Lafayette Park. Well, the nub of it that’s not enclosed by a security fence. There I found Nadine Seiler aka Team Algae, the demonstrator who gets so much media with her huge banners that she got an angry shoutout from President Dementia.

She was delighted; I was too and as we talked, runners and tourists kept stopping by to take photos with her sign.

Even the trees are celebrating – we’re having some of the best fall colors in years.

The Chuds Go Silent

I expected more of an outcry from the chuds, the die-hard MAGA cultists that have popped up in DC in various groups including the Proud Boys, 1776 Restoration Movement and Freedom Corner.

But they were mostly silent. And not just because so many of them have been sent back to jail for new crimes after Trump’s pardons.

In fact, they were already disaffected and disappointed before the election. Trump had two years and he didn’t pay the J6ers nor did he honor their supporters with a White House visit. Or medals! They really believed that.

Known antifa members including Nadine and Red Bike Guy were not locked up.

The clones that supposedly populate the government were not unmasked. There were no military tribunals and mass executions. JFK Jr did not reveal himself in a dramatic Oval Office address.

They trusted the plan but the storm did not come. “Where we go one, we go all” led to massive defeat.

The chuds issued some half-hearted cries of voter fraud but this was an election result that was too big and too national to doubt.

One of them ranted from his storage unit that, “This will be the gayest Congress in history!”

MAGA is Dead

After the 2024 election of Donald Trump, I said, “We all lost. MAGA just hasn’t realized it yet.”

In 2026, I watched the livestreamers who did the trucker convoys during the Biden eraa complain that gas is now too expensive to go anywhere. Also, they can’t find healthcare or afford meat.

But they never make the connection between Trump’s war and their financial ruin. So close to getting it but they never will for doing so would force them to admit that they were wrong.

Instead, they drift away. No longer online, swearing off social media, disappeared.

This is how cults end, not with Jonestown with a slow fade into history, leaving behind nothing but debt and broken people.

You’ll never go broke underestimating the stupidity of Donald Trump.

When I heard that he was going to give a midterm closing speech, I assumed that he would give voters a reason to get to the polls by touting his achievements and providing hope for the future.

Because that would be the smart thing to do.

Instead, he went to the Reflecting Pool, site of one of his most public debacles, to hold up pictures of pipes and grout to a small crowd of staff and reporters.

On the day before the election, that’s what he wanted to talk about – the Reflecting Pool. His crowning achievement.

Voters top concerns are:

1. Gas Prices
2. The Iran War
3. Corruption

Trump spoke about:

1. The Reflecting Pool
2. The East Potomac Park Golf Course
3. His Grievances

Sometimes, the stupid of this timeline is so overwhelming it’s like a sharp pain right between the eyes.

I missed the speech because I was with the protesters. The regime put up miles of fences around the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool and Constitution Gardens to keep them out. There was a massive security presence from every agency in the region, including some of the highest-paid cops in the city. Trump’s mid-day stunt cost taxpayers a fortune, as well as snarling traffic and ruining school field trips.

There weren’t many protesters – Trump’s speech had been announced just the day before and I think there’s an overall exhaustion among the public with the Trump Show. America has had enough.

A couple of red-hatted idiots wandered through, including a man in a “Stephen Miller for President” t-shirt. He was wearing a clear backpack, thinking that Trump’s speech would be open to the public.

But, in a final insult to his cult, it was closed. No chuds allowed. They wandered the vast security perimeter, unable to see over the fence.

Nadine Seiler was at the protest with her Amphifa costume and her Team Algae banner. In his speech, Trump bragged that he had defeated the Reflecting Pool algae. Like the Iran War, he has claimed victory over the algae several times already but it always comes back. You cannot defeat algae; merely contain it.

Team Algae never loses.

It’s fitting that Election 2026 ends at the Reflecting Pool. Trump ruined it for no reason, wasted millions of tax dollars on it, blamed others when it wrong, even locked a guy up and, being an idiot, can’t stop talking about the debacle.

Nothing sums up the corruption, cruelty and incompetence of the regime like the Reflecting Pool.

The Tour de Destruction is a bike route around Washington, DC, that highlights the damage that Trump has done to the nation’s capital with his renovation projects and executive temper tantrums.

Distance: Eight Miles

Time: 1.5 hours

Directions: Google Maps

Take your own bike or rent one from Capital Bikeshare! There are CaBi stations at numerous spots along the route.

Lafayette Park

We begin across the street from the White House, in Lafayette Park. Trump has kept this historic landmark locked up behind a fence all year, supposedly for renovations.

New trees have been planted, the brick sidewalks have been replaced and they even got the fountains working again.

But the park remains closed, though a little slice of it is open so that tourists can stare through the mesh of a security fence at the White House.

If you visited in the past, you probably remember being able to walk right up to the White House fence. You can’t do this anymore.

Trump closed the park during his first term, too. Shortly after he left, I wrote about it for The Washington Post so this whole experience is some weird deja vu for me.

Reminder: this is a park that belongs to the public, not Trump.

The Kennedy Center

Bike west along the G St bike lane until you get to the Kennedy Center.

In a fit of childish pique, Trump closed the national arts center because a court said that he couldn’t put his name on it. Shows were cancelled, workers laid off and the building was secured.

A big tarp still hangs from it, hiding the spot where they removed Trump’s name from the structure. The public is not allowed to see the erasure, lest they get ideas that Dear Leader’s presence is merely transient.

Despite being closed, the money-spending goes on. Uniformed security guards protect the sacred tarp and gardeners refresh the greenery, despite the fact that the Kennedy Center has no visitors, other than the occasional jogger or cyclist.

Reflecting Pool

Next, follow the trail along the river to the Reflecting Pool.

You’ll pass gold statues on Memorial Bridge. There are four of them. Cost: $5 million. They were bronzes but Trump slathered them in gold paint, like butter dispensed on movie theater popcorn.

Set on tall columns, I don’t think drivers can even see them as they burn $5 gallon gas getting in and out of the city. You have to be on bike or foot to appreciate the garish waste.

But if there’s one project that embodies the stupidity, corruption and folly of the Trump regime, it is the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Dear Leader had a dumb idea: paint the bottom of the pool blue. No one dared tell him it was a dumb idea. No studies or tests were done. Work began immediately, with Trump promising that it would take a couple weeks and a couple million dollars.

More than six months and $16 million later, we are still at war with Iran, I mean, the Reflecting Pool. Like the war, it has escalated in time, cost and complexity with no end in sight.

And it has dragged in innocent victims, like David Hearn, the Olympian who the regime charged with felony vandalism (later dropped).

I’ve watched the lifecycle of the Reflecting Pool, from the moment in April when Trump’s handpicked crew began slopping paint around to the steamy days of summer when the water turned green to now as contractors scoop fallen leaves out of the water.

East Potomac Park

From the Reflecting Pool, follow Ohio Drive to East Potomac Park. By the FDR Memorial, you’ll pass a DC Water project that has prompted lots of conspiracy theories and another site that may be the future home of Trump’s “Garden of Heroes.”

As you enter East Potomac Park, you’ll see the golf course on the right and lots of tree stumps, where the regime illegally cut down trees before a judge stopped them.

And a giant, two-story tall mound, which contains debris from the East Wing of the White House. They dumped it on a golf course next to a river. And the debris probably contains asbestos.

East Potomac Park is much more than an inexpensive place to play golf. It’s a national park that was created by Congress for the benefit of the public and is also home to picnic areas, playgrounds and other recreational opportunities. The road which goes around the peninsula is popular with cyclists, runners and walkers. It’s also part of the Marine Corps Marathon.

Trump wants to level the site, including cherry blossom trees, and replace it with a championship-level golf course. No playgrounds, no space for runners or cyclists, just a fancy course for the rich.

A judge recently issued a temporary restraining order barring drastic changes to the park. Trump says he’s shutting it down on November 15. A constitutional crisis over a golf course seems silly but the core issue isn’t: can the President destroy a national park?

Freedom Plaza

Continue the Tour de Destruction with something lighter and more absurd: the Freedom Plaza Statue Garden.

To get there, go north on the 15th St Bike Lane, which the regime tried and failed to destroy for the America 250 celebrations. Local groups sued and beat them in court. This is why you fight.

Make a right on Pennsylvania Avenue to get to Freedom Plaza.

Trump took this open plaza, which offered a wonderful view of the US Capitol, and cluttered it with statues of dubious historicity. The regime is obsessed with statues.

Officially, it’s the 12 Soldiers of the Revolution Exhibition, but locals have dubbed it the statue garden or the chessboard.

It’s temporary, thank god, because the statues are really cheesy, depicting “patriots” looking like they just stepped out of a video game. They all seem to be running with guns. And one is of Caesar Rodney, the slaveholder whose statue was removed from Delaware in 2020.

Black Lives Matter Plaza

After returning to the 15th St bike lane, look to the left to get a glimpse of the White House Ballroom towering over the trees. It’s a massive slab of a building compared to the deliberately modest size of the Executive Mansion.

All this construction has made a mess out of the bike lane, too. The 15th St Bike Lane was designed to go through Lafayette Park, planners unable to conceive that a future tyrant would one day close the park.

Now, the bike lane ends at New York Avenue before restarting on the other side of the park. Go up the street or the sidewalk, make a left on I Street and then a left on 16th St, where you will pass the remains of Black Lives Matter Plaza.

In 2020, Mayor Bowser had “Black Lives Matter” painted in huge letters on the street. In 2025, she tore it up, before she even got a formal request from the regime. She surrendered in advance. In return, she got insults and occupation from the National Guard. This is why you don’t surrender.

Finish the Tour de Destruction in Lafayette Park. Take photos and record these moments for posterity – no telling what Trump could do to our monuments and landmarks in the last desperate days of the regime.

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Check out Cackling at Fascism: How Washington Learned to Laugh Last in the Washington City Paper, which features several of my photos.

I’m obsessed with the resistance street art of Washington, DC.

PosterTifa

It started with the Sandwich Guy posters, the Banksy-style artworks that memorialized a moment of resistance to the occupation of the city. Trying to pin an assault charge on a guy for throwing a soft roll at a federal officer was absurd. The poster was an equally absurd response to this abuse of the justice system.

Our elites failed us by ushering in Trump 2.0 but the people hadn’t surrendered and were busy responding with the only tools they had: art.

I’d find the posters early in the morning, wheat pasted to construction sidings and boarded-up office buildings (DC has a lot of those downtown). There was a spot on M St NW that got all the new posters. A fresh work of satiric bile, inspired by the latest atrocities, like a newspaper of the voiceless.

Statue Wars

Installations like the Trump-Epstein Friendship Statue mocked the endemic corruption of the regime.

The smart thing would’ve been to just ignore this temporary installation but instead the regime, as dumb as they are cruel, destroyed the statue of Trump and Epstein intertwined. Don’t tell me that art doesn’t work.

You can learn more about how the nation’s capital got creative to get back at the regime in Cackling at Fascism: How Washington Learned to Laugh Last, an article in the City Paper featuring my photos of Sandwich Guy posters, the Trump-Epstein Friendship Statue, a golden throne for Donald and more.

Trump promised us a golden age – well, we know how that went. If you want more resistance art from DC, check out my online album The Golden Age of Street Art.

“Trump has screwed up the Reflecting Pool in ways that I never could’ve imagined.”

That’s my quote on NPR’s All Things Considered, which did a great story on the hold that the Reflecting Pool has on our collective interest. They call Trump’s changes to the pool a reality show but it’s more like a horror flick. Seeing the Mad King take a timeless symbol of this country and defile it hurts the soul.

I have been taking photos of the Reflecting Pool since the construction project began in May, seeking to document the damage. Check out my Flickr Album for almost 200 photos of the pool in various stages of deconstruction.

The regime hid the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, putting up fences and closing parks so that photographers (like me) couldn’t get photos of our heritage being knocked down and carted away in dump trucks.

But they couldn’t do that with the Reflecting Pool, its very size and centrality defeating attempts to hide their colossal fuckup.

We all saw when the Reflecting Pool turned lime-green in a spectacular algae explosion. And we all witnessed blue sheets of pool liner unfurling like the tattered flag of a fading nation.

MAGA cult members insisted that this was AI, like the AI slop that they pollute the online world with, data centers in the exurbs churning through water and power to produce tributes to Dear Leader.

That’s another reason why I took so many photos. I wanted people to see the undeniable truth. I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer somewhere, I was up at dawn, sitting on the marble steps, camera in hand, documenting what the Reflecting Pool looked like on a near daily basis. 

The draining of the pool. The no-bid contractors spraying blue paint and sealant all over the concrete, driving over their hoses, working while the surfaces were still wet, water pooled in the corners.

And then refilling the water, sparkling with nanobubblers and “looking good, sir!” for a couple of weeks, flurries of self-congratulations from Trump and his minions, before the pool turned fluorescent green, like a flavor of Gatorade, NPS staff with long hoses futilely trying to clean up the mess, bottles of chemicals dumped in but you can’t defeat algae, only contain it, then chips of blue sealant floating to the surface, big sheets peeling up, the networks covering it live 24/7, claims of sabotage, arrests and protesters appearing with banners supporting Algaetifa before the administration gave up, fenced off the pool and drained it.

Oh, and there was no 350 foot yard gash in the pool, caused by a vandal, like Trump claimed. I was there to document the truth the morning the pool went dry, my most popular tweet ever with more than two million views.

The Reflecting Pool is empty now and there is no 300 yard long gash that’s been peeled up. That line running down the middle is for drainage and was there before pic.twitter.com/Z6VXQ7HuSf

— Joe Flood (@joeflood) July 14, 2026

The fix of the Reflecting Pool was supposed to take a week and cost $2 million. Instead, it’s been months and has ballooned to $16 million and counting.

So similar to another water-based quagmire that Trump stumbled into around the same time: the Gulf of Hormuz. He can’t keep either body of water open, defeated by algae at home and Iran abroad.

Like I said in the NPR story, “The Reflecting Pool was fine.” The pool did what it was supposed to do – reflect water. Maybe it was a little murky at times but at sunrise, with the sun coming up from behind the Capitol, no one noticed. It was a gorgeous Washington vista that seemed timeless and inviolable until Trump violated it.

Now, the Reflecting Pool is empty, just acres of bare concrete under a summer sky, surrounded by a fence, monitored by security cameras on poles and watched by National Guard soldiers.

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The USA vs David Hearn is a bullshit case that will never see trial and is a total waste of court resources.

Hearn was charged with felony destruction of property, one of several “vandals” who allegedly damaged the Washington Monument Reflecting Pool. According to Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney for the District of Columbia, he ripped out a chunk of the pool liner with both hands.

This amazing act of antifa destruction occurred during the middle of the day, with dozens of Park Police and National Guard nearby, none of whom witnessed or recorded it on their bodyworn cameras. It wasn’t captured, either, by the numerous photojournalists present (the Reflecting Pool was in the news) nor by the dozens of tourists with their iPhones. If it was filmed by the security cameras mounted on the Lincoln Memorial, Pirro didn’t mention it.

There is video of him being arrested next to the Reflecting Pool but he’s not holding a piece of pool liner, there’s no ripped pool liner nearby and there’s no paint on his hands.

But Trump wanted a vandal arrested so they found one.

The Arraignment

Hearn was arraigned on the felony in DC Superior Court this morning. He faces up to ten years in prison.

Outside the court, was the largest “court support” demonstration I have ever seen. As his attorney would later argue, Hearn has long-standing ties to the community. That was evident from the number of people who turned out for him.

Many also see this as an abuse of power and a distraction from the real problems of this country, like the affordability crisis and the never-ending quagmire of the Iran War. Their signs read:

The Deflecting Pool: Never Admit Failure

Paint won’t stick; you must acquit

Scapegoat for the Deflecting Pool fail

We are all David Hearn

Trump stuck in a straight of warm ooze

Live via WebEx

After seeing the protest, I rushed home to watch the arraignment via WebEx.

I’m a veteran courtwatcher, having viewed arraignments, status hearings and even trials of chud criminals who do stupid shit and end up before a judge. Most notably, this includes Bryan Betancur, the J6er arrested for touching women’s hair in the Metro. He stalked a friend of mine so I’ve been following his journey through the criminal justice system for more than three years.

Arraignments are typically dismal affairs. Defendants are brought before the court, charges are read and the judge decides whether to release them or not, and under what conditions. It can be depressing, for it is mostly domestic assault cases and the defendants typically test positive for drugs (PCP is a fav).

99% of people are released under personal recognizance, which is a promise to show up back in court. A lot of defendants also receive some kind of restriction, like a stay away order for a person and/or location. Some have to wear a GPS tracker and/or report to pretrial services. You generally only get held if you’re a danger to the community or have a track record of non-compliance (like Betancur).

The USA vs David Hearn was called at 9:30 AM in DC Superior Court. Every seat in the court was taken by supporters and members of the media. There were also two overflow rooms and the WebEx was filled with newbies who had their cameras on (a no-no). This was a huge difference from a typical day, where people cycle in and out of court as their cases are called, usually with just lawyers, defendants, family and maybe a court watcher or two.

He was officially charged and entered a plea of not guilty. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Reddington asked for stay away order from the Reflecting Pool. Mary Dohrmann, for the defense, argued that Hearn was an upstanding citizen with a long track record in the community and that the charge was capricious, for he had been arrested for a misdemeanor that was then changed to a felony. She asked for no restrictions.

Approach the bench, the judge said, and the husher went on so that the court couldn’t hear their private discussion.

No restrictions or a stay away order, Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean ruled. Personal recognizance. A status hearing was scheduled for August 5 to cover discovery motions and any other issues.

The judge indicated that if there’s a trial, it won’t be until February 2027 because court resources are limited and they are focused on custodial cases, i.e., people who are already locked up. 

Think about that for a moment: there are people languishing in jail, possibly innocent, who can’t get their day in court because the judicial system is busy with the case of a man who reached into the water of the Reflecting Pool.

Also, who isn’t getting prosecuted because the US Attorney Office for DC, already short-staffed, is tied up in this case?

Jeanine Pirro is neglecting her duties to keep the people of DC safe because she’s focused on a political prosecution.

The USA vs David Hearn is a bullshit case that will consume months of time that could be spent putting real criminals behind bars. It will bubble along into next year with discovery motions and status hearings, a waste of effort for all concerned, before the prosecution inevitably drops it shortly before trial.

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The Reflecting Pool should’ve been a one-day story but the Trump regime’s refusal to admit the truth has turned it into a never-ending saga of regime incompetence.

Trump was proud that he had painted the Reflecting Pool in “American flag blue.” Without other accomplishments to highlight, it was his signature achievement. He crowed about it in the Oval Office and he even brought his own visual aids. Never mind the Iran War debacle, look at the Reflecting Pool!

When the pool turned green on June 15, a totally natural occurrence, whichever blonde is acting as press secretary could’ve put out a statement reading:

The National Park Service is working on the problem.

That’s it. Shift the blame to NPS and move on.

But, instead, bizarrely, they couldn’t handle the verdant truth so Trump toadies flooded Twitter with AI slop depicting a bright blue Reflecting Pool that did not exist in the real world.

It was absurd. And it wasn’t something that was hard to check, like the Iran War negotiations, it was a body of water in a public park.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
– 1984

I never thought fascism would be so dumb.

When the public rejected the AI fakery, the regime turned to the old enemy: antifa.

Supposedly, antifascist super soldiers slipped into the heart of Washington, evaded the National Guard patrols and caused the algae bloom. What started out as a story on a satiric site (the header read: this is not real) became something that was believed by millions of gullible and way too online Trump supporters who earnestly thought that antifa had dumped “concentrated Georgia algae” into the Reflecting Pool.

Are they that dumb? Yes, they want to believe.

I saw it with one of the MAGA livestreamers in DC, who filmed herself waddling around the Reflecting Pool. She asked one of the park workers if antifa had sabotaged the pool. “I don’t know anything about that” he replied and she took that as evidence that, yes, the pool had been sabotaged. She had seen it in his eyes!

Or take the case of the “Reflecting Pool Influencer,” a former journalist fired during Trump 1.0 for being too crazy.

For days, she claimed to have photo evidence of antifa sabotage of the pool that would prove that Trump was right when he said that someone had sliced a 350-foot long section of the pool liner with a knife.

But when she revealed her “evidence” it was gaps and marks in the material that cushioned the pool. Was this sloppy work by the contractor? A natural occurrence? 

She also claimed that people threw objects into the pool. Does she have video or photos showing this? Nope.

Reminder: there are cameras everywhere in Washington.

And there are police, too.

If you want to see what a police state looks like, go to the Reflecting Pool. Tourists are outnumbered by agents of the state, including the Park Police, the National Guard, the US Marshals and deputized officers from other states.

They have arrested people for touching the water. When I was there, I witnessed the National Guard rush up to a Swedish journalist after she dipped her hand in the water as she did her report. “This is your one warning!” they shouted.

There are no signs saying that you can’t touch the water. And sometimes you can. Or maybe some people can. Depends on who you ask.

Ok we are getting conflicting information here. Texas
Marshal told me yes, but National Guard told the Swedish media that if she touches it again, it will be her last time🫠🫠 pic.twitter.com/iwSUcTG5h2

— Anarc-y princess (@SatireAP) June 21, 2026

Every day, there’s a new angle on the Reflecting Pool beat. Reporters hang out on park benches, watching for developments. Photographers prowl the pool to get pictures of the police response. Networks livestream the pool for viewers who want to check the color of the water. Online personalities interview tourists, trying to manufacture viral moments. Activists preen for the cameras.

The cries of sabotage and the clumsy acts of fascism have kept this story alive, day after day. Amanda Moore, a journalist who covers the regime, told me that she’d rather be teargassed than cover this never-ending saga of regime incompetence.

The hottest story online this week is the Reflecting Pool.

This 2000 foot long body of water designed to reflect the Washington Monument was recently “fixed” by Donald Trump by painting the bottom of the pool in “American flag blue.”

This achievement of routine maintenance was announced with visual aids by a seated, briefly awake Trump in the Oval Office. Photos – real and fake – were slopped all over the twitters by his compliant social media gremlins.

The libs were wrong! The Reflecting Pool could be fixed and for cheap, too, despite the job ballooning in time and money from Dear Leader’s original one-week, $3 million cost estimate to six weeks and $14 million.

I rolled by a few times and it sure seemed that the Okies who got the no-bid contract (20% profit margin) didn’t know what they were doing as they slopped blue sealant of various hues on the empty Reflecting Pool.

But what the fuck did I know about pools, as I was told many times by MAGA cultists. Mr. Trump is a builder! He’s got a pool guy! Your President gets the job done!

Well.

Days after its triumphal reopening, the Reflecting Pool turned green and continued to turn green until it became a fluorescent color more associated with glow sticks than with nature.

I posted photos and video showing the algae outbreak and the chuds accused me of fake news. That’s old video from Obamer!

Anarchy Princess cleverly shared a video of the green water that was taken by a MAGA livestreamer. When they attacked her, she could say, “Don’t blame me. One of yours filmed this.”

This is from a MAGA livestream today.
The Reflecting Pool is VERY green and VERY disgusting 🤮🤮
Even on the worst days, I never saw it look this bad before. pic.twitter.com/PzReNHr00f

— Anarc-y princess (@SatireAP) June 13, 2026

Since they couldn’t deny reality, they claimed sabotage. Libs somehow destroyed Trump’s great work by dumping huge barrels of algae into this monument in the most heavily surveilled city on earth. 

When that didn’t take, they looked for a non-MAGA scapegoat. A “Reflecting Pool influencer” (yes, there is such a thing) blamed the National Park Service, claiming that algae from the pipes turned the Reflecting Pool green.

Typical. Contractors fuck things up and the regular employees have to fix everything. The “Reflecting Pool influencer” (a real person; read her very entertaining but totally insane Wikipedia) made videos condemning NPS as they stood in slimy water trying to clean up the algae.

Why did the Reflecting Pool turn green? Before the pool was painted, experts predicted that applying dark paint would absorb, not reflect, sunlight and cause the water to heat up. That is what appears to have happened.

Why did this blow up on social media? Every time I posted about the reflecting pool, chuds swarmed me with personal attacks. Anarchy Princess’ tweet got more than 5 million views on Twitter. The story has been covered by NPR, the Guardian, Fox News, the Washington Post – everywhere.

Why did this resonate with the public?

There’s not much Trump can point to as an accomplishment. Cleaning up DC and crowding it with statues is about it.

But after all that AI slop he posted and his rambling Oval Office press conference, the truth was revealed in fluorescent green. Rather than draining the swamp, he created one.

It is also emblematic of everything else he’s fucked up – tariffs, immigration, inflation, gas prices and the Iran War. No amount of Fox News spin or blonde influencers can cover up what Americans see with their own eyes.

It’s as obvious as the green water in the Reflecting Pool.