{"id":815,"date":"2026-06-24T11:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T11:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=815"},"modified":"2026-06-24T11:09:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T11:09:29","slug":"why-i-joined-team-algae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=815","title":{"rendered":"Why I Joined Team Algae"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Never in my life have I rooted so hard for algae. In fact, I\u2019ve never rooted for algae at all. Yet the sight of those tiny green organisms floating in the Reflecting Pool, absorbing sunlight, multiplying their little hearts out and living their best (presumably very short) lives, fills me with joy.<\/p>\n

Read more Andy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the Trump administration\u2019s many debacles, the greening of the Reflecting Pool is uniquely delightful. Every other Donald Trump farce contains elements of tragedy. Whatever schadenfreude we might otherwise feel from the president\u2019s haphazard \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs or cycle of threat and submission toward Iran is leavened with concern or even horror for the collateral damage. We feel bad for our country, however tremendous the content may be.<\/p>\n

The Reflecting Pool episode captures most of Trump\u2019s governing pathologies (corruption, incompetence, authoritarian menace, absurd lies) without any of the normal attendant consequences. It is pure, meaningless fun.<\/p>\n

Meaningless to everybody, that is, except Trump.<\/p>\n

Starting in April, the president began to boast, over and over, about his renovations. The new pool would be \u201cbeautiful,\u201d \u201cincredible.\u201d The president had the foresight to line the bottom with a sealant that would last at least 50 years, perhaps 100. He showed reporters a chart depicting the pool dwarfing skyscrapers in size (if you laid the skyscrapers on their side, which obviates their most impressive attribute). This was a strange subject to obsess about in the midst of a war, yet the president\u2019s enthusiasm for the topic seemed contagious. MAGA accounts on social media gloried in the incredible triumph of turning the pool blue.<\/p>\n

But soon green algae appeared on the water. Workers were dispatched to pour bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the basin. The impermeable sealant began peeling off, possibly because of substandard quality, or perhaps because hydrogen peroxide is used as a paint stripper.<\/p>\n

Reporters discovered that Trump had given no-bid contracts for the painting and water filtration. The task of turning the water clear had been entrusted to a firm improbably called Greenwater Services. Its owner, John J. Cafaro, has an appearance that Trump would describe as \u201ccentral casting,\u201d if the script called for No-Bid Contractor No. 1 to hand a stuffed envelope to Tony Soprano. Cafaro is a Trump donor, has been praised as a \u201cfantastic man\u201d by the president himself, and, unsurprisingly, has one prior conviction for conspiring to bribe an elected official (not Trump).<\/p>\n

Incompetence by cronies seems like a plausible hypothesis for the failure. But to question the quality of the work would be to question Trump himself. And so the president responded in the characteristic fashion he employs in the face of all setbacks, especially self-created ones.<\/p>\n

He blamed the failure on sabotage by unnamed enemies: vandals undermining his great project. Even though Trump had previously boasted that the new floor was impenetrable\u2014\u201cIf you had a knife, you can\u2019t even cut it. So strong, so powerful\u201d\u2014and even though it was constantly surrounded by witnesses with cameras, these vandals had somehow managed to cut it open. \u201cThey took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,\u201d he wrote Saturday on Truth Social. \u201cThey also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Another Top General Is Out at the Pentagon<\/a><\/p>\n

By Monday morning, Trump claimed, in another post, that the gash was 300 feet long. When he met with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, the gash had grown to 350 feet, and rather than having poured \u201ccorrosive and destructive chemicals\u201d into the beautiful water, the vandals had done something quite different from, and close to the opposite of, that. \u201cSomebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Trump told the press that he had photographic evidence of these astonishing crimes. When a reporter asked to see it, he demurred, \u201cAt the right time, you\u2019ll see it. You\u2019ll see it in court,\u201d expressing a heretofore-absent reluctance to taint a judicial proceeding with pretrial publicity.<\/p>\n

Simultaneous to Trump\u2019s loud and repeated insistence that he had uncovered a secret plot to deface his precious pool, the administration and its supporters began complaining that the news media was devoting too much attention to the subject. \u201cABC News is tougher on Trump about algae in the reflecting pool than they were on Biden about his disastrous exit from Afghanistan that cost American soldiers\u2019 lives,\u201d claimed the American Compass managing editor Drew Holden. \u201cLegacy media would rather report on algae than anything that actually matters to the American people,\u201d wrote The Federalist<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Apparently it was the liberal media<\/i>, not Trump, that had turned the Reflecting Pool into a symbol of Trump\u2019s agenda, while Trump himself was focused on weightier matters. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro warned the ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, who had stuck his hands into the pool to reveal the fraying surface liner, that he might \u201cface the criminal justice system\u201d for \u201cattempting to vandalize\u201d the pool.<\/p>\n

Police arrested David Hearn, a former Olympian canoeist, on Friday for touching the once-impermeable lining. The pool is now surrounded by agents from the U.S. Park Police and the mobilized National Guard, who probably never anticipated that their tour of duty would be to safeguard a tiny, landlocked body of water. I hope our troops succeed in this mission.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I would like nothing more than for the pool to turn green and fetid. The administration\u2019s more damaging yet abstract failures do not provide the satisfying metaphorical bluntness of the centerpiece of Trump\u2019s visual propaganda becoming, literally, a swamp.<\/p>\n

Read more The AI Super PACs Trying to Influence the Midterms<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The greening of the Reflecting Pool is meaningless to everybody, except the president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy I Joined Team Algae - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=815\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I Joined Team Algae - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The greening of the Reflecting Pool is meaningless to everybody, except the president.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=815\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-24T11:09:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"Why I Joined Team Algae\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-24T11:09:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815\"},\"wordCount\":985,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/a977685101669c4e97cf85a39d331ec7.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Ideas\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=815\",\"name\":\"Why I Joined Team Algae - 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