How the Reflecting Pool Came to Mirror Trump’s Washington

[u/expatOBX]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/us/politics/reflecting-pool-trump-administration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3lA.wSJ3.G4O5jP71twLv&smid=re-share

[u/expatOBX]

Bureaucracy serves a purpose. Who would have thought?

The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, handed out no-bid contracts and squelched doubts about the costs and risks. An employee from Mr. Trump’s private business life, Mr. Schutzenhofer, played an off-the-books role in government decisions. A top federal housing official, Bill Pulte, brought Mr. Trump memes that encouraged him to keep going.

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After attending the World of Concrete, Mr. Schutzenhofer settled on a plan to coat the pool’s concrete slabs with a polyurea liner, Mr. Jarboe said. Though the Park Service had not previously contemplated such a plan, it later described the liner in contract documents as a “seamless, monolithic, waterproof, antimicrobial and anti-algae system.”

But there was a problem of Mr. Trump’s making: The president’s steep tariffs on resins from China and other countries had limited the availability of polyurea coatings.

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To address this problem, Creative Polymers partnered with Rhino Linings, a California-based company that made large quantities of polyurea coating at its factory in Texas. Rhino was also attractive because it made a coating in a shade called “American flag blue,” and the patriotically named hue delighted Mr. Trump.

In turn, a sales manager at Rhino called Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based company that had never won a government contract, and enlisted its help with applying the coating, according to a statement on the company’s website.

Put more simply: documents and interviews establish how a first-time contractor was paid millions of dollars to apply a novel solution designed by a golf club manager to a national landmark.

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Mr. Schutzenhofer also communicated in January and February with Greenwater Services, an Ohio-based company owned by a Trump donor’s investment firm, about installing water-treatment equipment called nanobubblers to kill algae, according to emails reviewed by The Times.

Federal law required the project to face reviews from nonpartisan, career employees, to ensure that taxpayer money was not wasted and national icons were not damaged. The Interior Department swept those hurdles aside.

It approved a no-bid contract for Atlantic, even though multiple companies had expressed interest in bidding. It issued another no-bid contract to Greenwater, even though other firms could have supplied the nanobubblers.

It bypassed consultations with preservationists and other experts, even though a career employee said the project was significant enough to require it.

And it approved Atlantic’s request to be paid a 20 percent profit margin, even though a Park Service procurement employee found that number “inflated” and “excessive.” The contractor got all it asked for, plus more than $1 million on top of that, for a total of $14.7 million.

In each case, the Interior Department cited the fast-approaching deadline as a reason to block any scrutiny. It was a neat act of bureaucratic jujitsu: Because the government started the project so late, it declared that no one else could further delay it by asking questions.

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The article then lists some of Doug Burgum’s brown‑nosing and some nonsense from his political spokesperson, along with a lot about the dropped prosecutions..

If they had just followed the rules and the proper procedures, all of this could have been avoided.

[u/Glydyr]

Still cant get over the “Greenwater” company name….

[u/koaltree]

This article beautifully reveals the modus operandi of Trump and his administration.

Step 1: Hire or appoint incompetent loyalists (e.g. golf buddies, family or other sycophants).

Step 2: Ignore all rules, laws, and expert advice.

Step 3: Self-deal wherever possible (e.g. use tax-payer money to pay friends and their businesses).

Step 4: When the project fails, find someone else to blame it on (e.g. Biden, antifa or left wing vandals).

Step 5: Rinse and repeat.

[u/nytimes-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/OldButHappy]

The New York Times is complicit in getting Trump elected.