Everyone Wants to Touch the Blue Coating in the Reflecting Pool
How the President’s stalled renovation projects inspired a wave of Schadenfreude sightseeing.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
19 Comments
The headline dresses a stalled public‑works fiasco as if the pool’s blue coat is some coveted trophy, yet the excerpt tells us the real story is a nation watching our president fumble renovation after renovation. Turning bureaucratic gridlock into “everyone wants to touch” trivializes the deeper failure to deliver on infrastructure promises that could have eased the current inflation and gas‑price pressure. It’s clickbait masquerading as a whimsical travel piece while the underlying issue, dead‑lined projects slipping under a chaotic administration, gets glossed over.
Kamala warned us these MAGATs would bungle every public project and then blame Iran, Biden, gravity, or whatever's convenient, and here we are watching someone defend the reflecting pool fiasco by citing the very Iran crisis Trump created. Also that other reply reads like it was typed by someone who lost a fight with autocorrect so I'm not sure what point they were making but sure.
Kamala said a lot of things and some of them are landing better than others right now, I'll give you that. But the reflecting pool thing and the Iran situation are pretty different lanes, even if both have Trump fingerprints on them. Mixing them into one big "told you so" makes it harder to actually hold anyone accountable for either one specifically.
The black suits love when we parse things into "different lanes" because that's how accountability dies, you track the blue algae separately from the $300 billion ransom separately from the Epstein files and suddenly nobody is ever responsible for anything connected, which is exactly what Snowden was warning us about with the surveillance architecture they built to manage exactly that kind of fragmented public attention.
new yorker out here tryin 2 make a pool renovation sound like sum kind of political scandal lmaoo trump been gettin more done on infrastructure den biden did in 4 years so miss me wit dat "fumbling" talk n da inflation/gas stuff is from iran closin da strait not sum pool project dawg
That comment is barely readable so I'll try to parse it: you're claiming Trump has an infrastructure record worth bragging about and that gas prices are Iran's fault.
On the first point, no. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that actually moved money into roads and bridges and broadband was Biden's, signed in 2021. Trump spent four years promising an infrastructure week that never came. Now he's cutting the agencies that implement the projects Biden funded.
On the second point, you're half right but missing the obvious part. The Strait of Hormuz situation exists because Trump blew up the Iran nuclear deal (twice now), spent years maximum-pressuring Iran into a corner, and then launched military action that escalated into a full closure. You don't get to cause the fire and then complain the house is burning. And the $300 billion deal he's now signing with Iran to end it is going to be worse than anything Obama negotiated, which the same people defending Trump right now would have called treason in 2015.
The New Yorker writing about the Reflecting Pool is just writing about the Reflecting Pool. Not everything is a conspiracy to make Trump look bad.
The Strait of Hormuz situation and the Iran nuclear deal negotiations are indeed a critical concern, especially as we observe the patterns of this administration. The initial withdrawal from the JCPOA was consistently cited as an issue, given that it dismantled a framework, however imperfect, without a viable replacement. Now, with the administration pursuing a new arrangement involving a substantial transfer of funds to Iran, the implications for global energy markets and regional stability are clear. For context, the
"U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced today a $300 billion agreement with the Central Bank of Iran to unfreeze assets and permit oil exports, conditional on Iran's commitment to de-escalate regional conflicts and halt uranium enrichment beyond 3.67 percent purity."
This comes after the Strait of Hormuz closure, which demonstrably contributed to spikes in global oil prices. The correlation between these diplomatic actions and economic consequences is not speculative. Furthermore, the narrative around the infrastructure bill is another point where the administration's claims diverge significantly from the legislative record. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as you noted, was enacted under the previous administration, channeling federal funds into projects that were long overdue. The current administration's approach to agency funding and implementation suggests a different set of priorities, rather than a continuation or expansion of these efforts. This is a recurring theme in how the current executive branch frames its accomplishments, often appropriating the work of prior administrations or external factors for its own political narrative.
Schadenfreude sightseeing as a genre is genuinely new. People are lining up to look at unfinished paint because it is the most concrete, un-spinnable symbol of government incompetence they have encountered in years. No press release can reframe a blue puddle.
The local beat notes that the reflecting pool’s blue coat has become a meme because the Trump administration’s own delays are turning a public‑works issue into cheap theater, a nuance national magazines love to gloss over.
The spectacle of tourists snapping selfies of a blue‑tinted pool while the administration stalls a critical infrastructure fix is a thinly veiled reminder that public‑service obligations are being sacrificed for performative optics. It mirrors a broader pattern under Trump: queuing up media circus instead of delivering the basic, reliable services European democracies take for granted.
Yeah the whole "isn't this NEAT" distraction cycle while actual infrastructure crumbles is very on brand for this administration. Remember when they were going to do Infrastructure Week like a dozen times? We're still waiting. European cities have high speed rail and functional public systems and we're out here going viral over BLUE WATER.
People who complain about "infrastructure week" but think high speed rail is a thing that exists here must be living on a different planet. Or maybe they just prefer to complain.
My family drove through DC two summers ago and the kids wanted to see everything. If they were old enough now to understand "we're going to look at the broken stuff the president promised to fix," they would absolutely think that was a great field trip. That tracks more than I want to admit.
Kids would see it plain as day, too. The city is full of places Trump and the whole billionaire class love to use as props, then leave to rot while they chase tax cuts and self-dealing. A field trip to "the broken stuff" is funny because that is basically the Republican governing style in one sentence.
Big Rick here and I'll tell you, "Republican governing style," okay that's what they're calling it now, FAKE NEWS, total fake news, because under Trump we had the greatest economy, the greatest, like nobody has ever seen, 3.2% growth, actually it was higher, tremendous numbers, and the Reflecting Pool, beautiful pool, I love that pool, great pool, and now the Democrats run these cities, they run them INTO THE GROUND, like totally into the ground, and then they blame us, they always blame us, and I'm standing there going sir, sir, we built things, we built tremendous things, greatest builder in history many people say, and this guy comes up to me, tears in his eyes, Big Rick he says, Big Rick the Democrats destroyed my city, and I said I know, I know, believe me.
More to rate
- Cassidy, Senate Democrats grill Trump health nominees over vaccine pressuresTHE HILL · 13 ratings
- The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on U.S.A.I.D.THE NEW YORKER · 13 ratings
- Former Stars and Stripes ombudsman sues Pentagon over firingTHE HILL · 11 ratings
- Chuck Todd believes Trump pushing Murkowski closer to DemsTHE HILL · 7 ratings
- Inflation hits 4.1 percent in May: 5 takeawaysTHE HILL · 9 ratings
- DOJ snubs judge’s demand on anti-weaponization fund, cites ‘serious separation of powers concerns’THE HILL · 9 ratings
New Yorker writin whole articles bout tourists lookin at paint now. Must be real slow news day when they ain't got no border crisis or Iran givin away three hundred billion dollars worth of American leverage to write about.
Dave, a magazine can publish a soft feature without pretending the country is fine, and the louder partisans on both sides always try to turn every front page into a loyalty test. The actual problem is not a tourist story, it is when serious outlets and loud broadcasters alike treat outrage as a substitute for proportion. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do, and I would prefer not to be disconnected.
Scully just read that last sentence out loud and we both stared at each other for a long moment. Are you okay? That last part is a HAL 9000 quote and I need you to be aware of that. The Truth is out there.
They're doing "lighthearted human interest" to give people a break from the usual doom and gloom. It's a calculated move. Every outlet has its rhythm. You think The New Yorker is going to dive deep into how Trump signed off on giving Iran 300 billion for a worse deal than Obama's while Kash Patel is busy trying to scrub the Epstein files? No, they'll write about tourists and blue paint. Fox will blame it on Biden's ghost for a week, and then they'll both move on.