What Reflecting Pool Reflects Ain’t Pretty

Bill Press, Tribune Content Agency on Aug 6, 2026

The clue for #55 down in the New York Times crossword puzzle for August 5 – “apt name for a groundskeeper” – got me thinking about other apt names, or “aptronyms.” As it turns out, the world is full of them.

There was once a famous quarterback named Willie Thrower, and a horticulturist named Rose Bush. When I worked at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, our weatherman was Dallas Raines. Google also notes surgeon Dr. Cutter, orthopedist Dr. Bone, dentist Dr. Smiley, and plumbing manufacturer Thomas Crapper. We all remember a former c ongressman with the unfortunate aptronym Anthony Weiner. The groundskeeper’s name, by the way, is Lon. And don’t forget a journalist whose real name is Press.

But in Washington, nobody or nothing is more aptly named than the Reflecting Pool. Stretching out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool was designed by Henry Bacon to be a mirror of water, reflecting and connecting the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Memorial. It used to be one of the most magical places in the capital. Especially at night, it took your breath away.

It’s also one of Washington’s most historic sites. Where 75,000 gathered on Easter Sunday 1939 to hear Marian Anderson sing, after she was banned from Constitution Hall, and where 250,000 cheered on Aug. 28, 1963, hearing Martin Luther King Jr. declare “I Have a Dream.” And where, on Jan. 19, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden lined the rim with 400 lights, one for every thousand Americans dead from Covid-19.

But today, thanks to Donald Trump, the Reflecting Pool’s nothing but a big, ugly, scar on the National Mall. I went there this week to see for myself. It’s fenced off, so no one can get close. It’s totally drained and empty, except for water leftover from this week’s rainstorms. Its bottom is a dismal grey. And, though Trump promised to have the Reflecting Pool back, more beautiful than ever, by July 4, not one workman was in sight.

What happened to the Reflecting Pool reflects everything wrong about Donald Trump. As he relates, after a German tourist complained that the pool looked dirty, Trump – who’d already destroyed the Rose Garden and the East Wing of the White House – seized the Reflecting Pool as his latest personal destruction project.

On April 3, without consulting any experts or engineers, Trump ordered the Interior Department to gut and repaint the bottom of the pool “American flag blue.” Then, in violation of federal construction guidelines, he awarded a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, whose only similar experience had been painting a pool at his Virginia golf course.

There followed a string of lies. On May 27, he said the Reflecting Pool is “longer than the tallest building in the world if you set it on the side.” It’s not. He said it’s “almost 200 feet wide.” It’s not. He said the whole renovation would take one week and cost $1.8 million. It didn’t. It’s August, it’s still not finished, and it’s already cost $14.7 million.

We all know what happened next. Atlantic Industrial drained the pool, repainted the bottom and refilled it. The pool filled with algae and turned green, not blue. The pool was drained and repainted again and again, but sheets of paint kept peeling and floating to the surface. At which point, falsely egged on by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump claimed “vandals” had used “a very sharp knife or razors” to slice the paint, and later dumped fertilizer into the pool.

Trump then ordered the Justice Department to track down the “vandals,” which US Attorney Jeanine Pirro promptly saluted and did, charging three people with misdemeanors and three-time Olympian David Carter Hearn with a felony for the “crime” of reaching down and touching a strip of the peeling blue paint.

The whole thing was so ridiculous it had to fall apart. And it did on July 31, when Pirro suddenly dropped charges against Hearn and others, while admitting that problems with the Reflecting Pool were the result of “botched workmanship,” not vandalism.

Reportedly, the result was a contentious, finger-pointing, Oval Office confrontation between Trump, Pirro and Burgum. But all three are guilty. Pirro for filing charges with zero evidence to back them up, Burgum for blaming it on vandals and Trump himself, for lying about the entire operation and still blaming it on vandals.

The Reflecting Pool. Again, how aptly named. Because nothing better reflects the stupidity, incompetence, cruelty and criminality of the Trump administration.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)