New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out some irony after she was asked for a comment from MeidasTouch about the evolving fiasco surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which she says has turned into a "swamp."
The renovation of the Reflecting Pool has become a debacle, marked by recurring algae blooms, workers resorting to pouring hydrogen peroxide into the water to combat the problem, and a political blame game in which some Republicans have attempted to pin responsibility for the mess on Democrats.
To make matters worse, paint has reportedly begun peeling from the floor of the Reflecting Pool. The New York Times linked the problem to a $14.7 million no-bid contract awarded to Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings under a claim of urgent need.
The company was hired to apply a blue waterproof coating to the pool's concrete floor, but the coating has since shown signs of deterioration, raising further questions about the emergency contracting process and the quality of the work performed.
Trump has gone so far as to claim that "vandals" used "probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind" to make a "slit" in the pool's paint job, though he did not provide any proof to back this up.
Notably, after defending his administration's work on the Reflecting Pool, he said he "can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up." He claimed evidence would be presented "in court" and that reporters should simply reach out to the Parks Department to find out more.
After ABC News reported Monday that Trump continued to blame vandals for the peeling paint and other problems at the Reflecting Pool, while noting that he "provided no evidence of vandalism himself," he threatened to file a lawsuit against the network.
Trump of course campaigned on multiple promises to "drain the swamp" in D.C. and Ocasio-Cortez couldn't help but point out that the Reflecting Pool fiasco is a pretty accurate representation of what Trump's leadership actually looks like in practice.
She said:
“I mean, when you defund science research, when you don’t really understand the first thing about science, yeah, they talked a bunch of smack."
“They said they had to repaint the pool and now they’ve turned the place into a swamp. They turned it into an actual swamp.”
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Many agreed with her remarks.
Trump was never interested in "draining the swamp" at all, and in fact has made D.C. even swampier with his greed and corruption.
This Reflecting Pool fiasco is just the latest Trump failure to serve as a physical manifestation of that metaphor.














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