The U.S. may have lost its war against Iran, but there is another war that President Donald Trump still might be able to win. And that’s his war on algae in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Maybe.
President Trump has droned on repeatedly about the Reflecting Pool, insisting that it’s never been properly cared for and looks like a disgusting mess. Trump recently drained the pool and ordered the bottom painted dark blue in an attempt to make the water look bluer in a $14 million renovation.
The president failed to understand that what makes water look blue is the reflection of the sky, so painting the bottom doesn’t achieve what he thought it would. But more importantly, the color of the water is often dependent on the amount of green algae.
There’s been some amount of schadenfreude by liberals in recent days as algae has inundated the Reflecting Pool after Trump’s declaration that it looks better than ever. The Washington Post even had an expert conduct an analysis looking at years of satellite data, and it appears there’s more algae in the 6.75 million-gallon pool than at any time since 2021.
To add insult to injury, there are reports from multiple journalists that the blue paint at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool has been peeling off in chunks and floating to the top.
Workers were seen on Wednesday dumping bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the pool. And the U.S. Department of the Interior insists the algae is a normal part of the renovation process, telling news station WUSA 9 that the algae is a product of the “dormant supply lines during eight weeks of construction.” Interior says they’re now deploying nanobubble tech to clear the water.
“The advanced nanobubbler technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening—most infamously Obama’s reopening—since 1922,” the Interior tweeted on Wednesday.
The Interior Department tweet went on to insist, “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.” But none of that seems to be true.
Trump’s cronies have been trying to do a victory lap ever since the president signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday that benefits the Iranian regime without anything in return for the U.S. Yes, the MOU opens the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days while the U.S. and Iran ostensibly negotiate a real deal on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but it’s unclear whether we’ll even get to 60 days before the bombing starts up again between the U.S. and Iran.
Iranian officials are reportedly upset about Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon, which has not ceased since Israel launched a two-pronged war against Lebanon in conjunction with the war against Iran, which started Feb. 28. Iran believes that Israel ceasing hostilities is part of the MOU and puts the onus on Trump to control Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Vice President JD Vance criticized Israel in a rare rebuke on Thursday after it became clear the country is not happy with the MOU. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance told a reporter at the White House during a press briefing Thursday.
In an interview with the New York Times released Thursday, Vance also said, “You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.” As many people on social media pointed out, it’s the kind of thing that college students were saying at the height of the protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. And many of them literally wound up in detention centers for having the audacity to suggest it.
But Israel seems beyond anyone’s control, even if Vance is going out on a limb to criticize the country. Israel published a map on Thursday showing the parts of Lebanon that it is occupying, which the IDF calls a “security zone,” according to Reuters. A senior official in Israel told Reuters it was holding “stubborn negotiations” with Trump about keeping the troops in Lebanon. And given Trump’s political and ethical malleability, it seems highly unlikely that he’ll be any match for Israel’s negotiators.
All you need to do is remember that Trump, by all accounts, started the war in Iran at the request of Israel. There’s just no way this war is finally ending without Israel’s approval.
Anyways, based on a video posted to social media on Thursday, the Reflecting Pool is still very much green with algae.
Maybe Trump is 0-2 after all.
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