{"id":844145,"date":"2026-06-04T16:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/844145\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T16:09:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:09:29","slug":"trumps-overlooked-new-scandal-might-be-the-most-revealing-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/844145\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s overlooked new scandal might be the most revealing yet."},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the approximately 1.776 billion scandals<\/a> of this Trump administration, one has recently stood out to me: the ongoing boondoggle at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. What was supposed to be a minor maintenance project has somehow become one of the purest reflections of Trump-era governance, involving a no-bid contract, a golf-club manager from New Jersey, and the color \u201cAmerican Flag Blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of this is known only because of the dogged investigative journalism from David A. Fahrenthold<\/a>, who has spent years following the money around Donald Trump and his orbit for the New York Times. He has devoted a surprising amount of time and energy into relaying the minute engineering problems plaguing this shallow pool on the National Mall. Fahrenthold\u2014famous for breaking the existence of Trump\u2019s Access Hollywood tape, and for his Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning reporting on Trump\u2019s reputed charitable giving\u2014agreed to talk to me about his slow-burn reporting on the pool and what it reveals. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Aymann Ismail: Let\u2019s start at the beginning. How did you get so focused on the reflecting pool?<\/strong><\/p>\n

David A. Fahrenthold:<\/strong> Our original focus was no-bid contracts. We had already done a couple of stories about contracts that went to the company that planned the Jan. 6 rally in 2021 and the people renovating Lafayette Park. We knew that the Reflecting Pool work was going on because Trump had talked about it so much. So we started looking into it: Is this a no-bid contract? What did Trump say about it? Who is the company behind it? What was remarkable was that at every step, as you peeled back another layer, something wasn\u2019t quite what it was supposed to be or what Trump had said it was. It seemed as if it should have been a simple job. But every step made it more interesting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Was anyone skeptical that this was the story to drill down on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it helped that Trump had made such a big deal out of it. He had said, in effect: \u201cI found this contractor myself. He worked on the pool at my golf club.\u201d Even if that had been 100 percent true, and all of our reporting had borne that out, that alone would have been interesting: The president\u2019s pool guy is renovating the Reflecting Pool. I didn\u2019t have to sell it very hard. Once we started reporting, we found all these ways in which his account didn\u2019t seem to square with reality. We realized, Wait, it\u2019s not actually a pool guy. And then all these other things the president had said about it turned out not to be true.<\/p>\n

How did the story unfold as you were reporting it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a personal philosophy, and not everybody agrees with it, but I think especially in the Trump era, the best way to tell an investigative story is a little bit at a time, iteratively. There are so many news stories happening at once that it\u2019s risky to say, \u201cI\u2019m going to write one big story, and I\u2019m going to publish it on this day.\u201d Then you have to hope that nothing else crazy is happening on that day and people have time to sit down and read it.<\/p>\n

When you write these stories a little bit at a time, you give them more chances to find people. Then, if people get interested, they can go back and read everything else you\u2019ve written. And once you\u2019ve established in people\u2019s minds, \u201cOK, this is an interesting story and I\u2019m following it,\u201d each new detail feels manageable. It doesn\u2019t feel to the reader like, \u201cOh my God, I have to sit down and read this whole long saga.\u201d It\u2019s more like: \u201cI\u2019m interested, and now I\u2019m going to read about the next little turn of the screw.\u201d That\u2019s easier than asking people to commit to something very long all at once.<\/p>\n

As a reporter, you put the story out there, and you\u2019re basically saying: Look, everybody, I\u2019m interested in this topic. If you know something, come find me. You can find people who know something from the inside\u2014or people who are experts in a very obscure topic, like reflecting pools, will come forward and say, \u201cActually, there\u2019s something you\u2019re missing here. There\u2019s an important piece in plain sight that you should be looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even know how to introduce the concept of \u201cAmerican Flag Blue.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

We found things out in pieces. First, he\u2019s not Trump\u2019s pool guy. He\u2019s not anybody\u2019s pool guy. It\u2019s a company that, as far as I can tell, doesn\u2019t do swimming pools. They coat highway culverts. They work on fuel tanks and roofs and things like that, but they are not a swimming pool company at all. And as far as I can tell, they have never worked for any of Trump\u2019s pool companies.<\/p>\n

Then we looked at the contract. It was a no-bid contract for this job, given to a company that had not done anything like this before. It certainly had never done a federal contract of any kind before. And then there\u2019s what the company\u2019s actually doing to the Reflecting Pool. There are two things: One is something people have said for a long time the pool needs, that somebody has to fill in the spaces between the concrete slabs to make sure they don\u2019t leak. The other thing\u2014the much better-known thing\u2014is that they\u2019re putting a waterproofing coating down at the bottom of the pool. There\u2019s a tint in the waterproofing, and Trump says he chose the color himself: American Flag Blue.<\/p>\n

\"Painting<\/p>\n

Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

That part\u2014putting the waterproofing on the pool\u2014may not hurt. But it\u2019s certainly not anything anybody had said was going to help. The slabs at the bottom of the pool are 8 inches of concrete. If water is leaking through 8\u00a0inches of concrete, it\u2019s not very much. Nobody had ever said that this was the problem that needed fixing. But all of a sudden, the Trump administration decided, This is something we need to do, and we need to spend millions of dollars to do it.<\/p>\n

What do you make of the \u201cpool guy\u201d claim?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting because, at the beginning of this story, Trump said, essentially, \u201cI picked my pool guy to fix the Reflecting Pool.\u201d That raises all kinds of questions about conflicts of interest. Is that guy going to give him a free pool the next time he resurfaces the pool at a Trump golf club because he got this big contract? But then you\u2019re in this position where Trump says something that sounds as if he\u2019s admitting to something that could create a conflict of interest. Then, the first story we did, we\u2019re like: Wait, this may not be his pool guy. I couldn\u2019t find evidence that it was his pool guy. So I\u2019m trying to fact-check Trump on Trump\u2019s own admission of a conflict of interest that may not exist. I don\u2019t think that was a common thing in reporting on presidents in the past. Finding the truth, in that case, was maybe something that makes Trump look better than Trump\u2019s own account of what happened, which is so surreal.<\/p>\n

You mentioned that in the Trump era, it can be better to let these stories come out incrementally, because there are always bigger stories happening and you don\u2019t want yours to get lost. You\u2019re also the person who broke the Access Hollywood tape. You know the impact of the larger stories. How did you get to the philosophy you\u2019re following now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a lot of people at the New York Times writing pieces that involve much more money and much bigger federal spending programs. And that may be me someday too.<\/p>\n

But there are a couple of reasons I find these stories really interesting. One is that they clearly matter to the president. He talks about these projects all the time. He posts about them. His administration has gotten very invested in this Reflecting Pool project in particular. It clearly matters a great deal to him. He talks about it almost more than he talks about some much bigger problems he faces. If it matters to Trump, it ought to matter to us.<\/p>\n

The other thing is that it takes a larger narrative\u2014in this case no-bid contracts\u2014and narrows it down to something readers can understand. The bigger issue is the administration giving out contracts without the kind of competition you\u2019re supposed to have, the competition that helps find the best contractor for the best price. That can feel abstract. But the Reflecting Pool makes it tangible. Readers have seen the Reflecting Pool. Many of them have been there. They know what it is and what it ought to look like. So this is a federal project they can understand. They can understand that it will be different now because it\u2019s painted blue. In that way, the pool encapsulates this much bigger, more abstract issue in something readers can easily envision.<\/p>\n

How would you encapsulate those bigger issues?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    The reason I like writing about it is that I do think it\u2019s emblematic of this willingness inside the Trump administration to shoot from the hip. They chose a company that apparently had no experience doing this job. They\u2019re disregarding expert opinions. They\u2019re not letting people compete to see if there\u2019s somebody else who could do it better or more cheaply. They\u2019re just jumping right into this thing. And they\u2019re doing it in a rush, in this case because they want to get it done before July\u00a04. How many other things have we seen that follow that kind of pattern but are much bigger and more important than the Reflecting Pool? The Iran war could be a good parallel to that.<\/p>\n

    If the Reflecting Pool contract goes bad, what happens? The pool leaks a little bit. There\u2019s algae. It\u2019s not that different from the status quo Trump inherited. But you can tell, in that situation, how they got themselves into this easily avoidable problem. And you can see their decisionmaking approach to a million other things that are much more important.<\/p>\n

    We\u2019re not talking about the impact on the international economy from putting tariffs in place. We\u2019re not talking about the complex Middle Eastern diplomacy involved in starting a war with Iran. But you can still discern the same rush, the same eagerness to assume that everything is going to turn out great without taking many steps to make sure that it does.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \n Luke Winkie
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    <\/a><\/p>\n

    Where do you think your reporting goes from here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    There are a lot of other things happening on the mall and around Washington to beautify the capital before July\u00a04. And even though we\u2019re so close to it, they\u2019re still starting new projects. So we\u2019re going to try to do more reporting about the pool, and also more writing about no-bid contracts around D.C. and how much the government is spending.<\/p>\n

    But there is still the much bigger issue of giving out contracts without competition\u2014sometimes to companies that have some connection to Trump. That is bigger than this story, and in some places it involves much more money. My hope is that after July\u00a04, once we\u2019ve seen how this Washington makeover ends, we can look at some bigger stories that have the same contours.<\/p>\n

    Are you going to the UFC cage match on Trump\u2019s birthday?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I was not invited. But if they invited me, I might go.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the approximately 1.776 billion scandals of this Trump administration, one has recently stood out to me: the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":844146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[69,50,10637,67,132,68,2058],"class_list":["post-844145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-donald-trump","tag-news","tag-scandals","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116692711473331867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}