Several months before blue strips started floating to the surface of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a company involved in its last renovation more than 15 years ago was approached with an opportunity to do this remodel as well. But the company said no.
Specifically, it balked at two requirements – the Trump administration wanted it done by July 4, and the pool bottom had to be blue, according to two employees with the New Jersey-based Sika Corporation, which provided the concrete construction and sealing products for a 2010 renovation project to the Reflecting Pool.
According to the two employees, who spoke to CNN on the condition they not be identified, both demands made the job “unfeasible.”
Wait, people were driving on the reflecting pool just after the bottom was painted blue?
His upcoming appearance in front of the pool (because milli vanili canceled and are dead) will be at 9pm for… important secret president reasons.
Also just unrelated fact to share because I like to be helpful, sunset time in Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2026 is 8:34 PM.
Online commentators have also speculated that the bottom of the pool may have been affected by the presence of heavy equipment and trucks — and a presidential motorcade that drove through at one point — shortly after the coating was applied.
Ravi Kurani, President of Standard Water Corp, an industrial technology company, told CNN he would never recommend driving cars out onto a pool surface, especially when renovations are being done.
“It’s like you’re putting flooring on your kitchen floor and then you’re take a really heavy tractor on top of it – it’s going to mess it up a little bit.”
lol
WTF? I had no idea… I really wanted to see this, so here is a video.
Never heard about the motorcade thing until I read the story. That’s not just everyday stupidity - that’s a whole new level of moronic.
I’d heard about it and seen the photos. If it was indeed vandalized, these are the vandals. I hope they get arrested soon. They’ve got a long record of destroying things and need to be stopped.
Just vandals…? I have some bad news for you, no one is going to arrest the police
Dude can’t even walk 100 yards.
the time delay made it unfeasible because to paint something - even if it’s polyurethane based or epoxy based- you have to dry it out first. otherwise the moisture does bad things. (aka, causes it to not adhere properly.)(aka causes it to flake off.)
It’s rather like painting over wet drywall mud.
The “it must be blue” because blue absorbs more light than white- and that caused the massive algae bloom.
But Trump is a moron who can’t comprehend just how fucking stupid he is, or that he’s not the smartest person in the room; so of course he gave it to his buddy who was happy to do it for a “small” bonus, even though that guy is at least as stupid as Trump is.
And apparently they drove on it, like an entire motorcade
that probably didn’t actually do any harm…
the water weighs more than even trump’s fat ass.
The contact area of a vehicle is a few sq cm however, and is applied with torque.
Yeah… Those big “slashes” claimed to have wrecked the coating? Likely done by the edges of the tyres of the motorcade.
Water may be heavier, but it applies that pressure evenly, not in very narrow strips.
It’s more about the friction from the tires
It does, but it’s essentially static weight distributed over the whole thing, rather than specific moving points if pressure
I’d think you’d want the bottom to be black, so that it reflects the surroundings instead of being visible. You say the blue color caused the algae bloom by absorbing more light, is that a temperature thing? I would think absorbing more light would leave less for photosynthesis. I thought the algae bloom was caused by not maintaining the filtration system.
It’s classic Trump, slap a coat of paint on a problem instead of fixing the rot underneath. Change the aesthetics while destroying the purpose of it. I’m just amazed he didn’t paint it gold.
The impact of the blue (Or any dark ) paint was that it absorbs more radiation from sunlight, increasing the temperature of the water in the pool. It’s this temperature increase which gives rise to the algal bloom. Theoretically painting it black would have been even worse.
slap a coat of paint on a problem instead of fixing the rot underneath.
I think you just described why he wears orange makeup everyday
Obama painted the bottom
blackgrey for the better reflection.I don’t see why they just don’t replace with water with a blue mirror for a real good reflection.
Preferably a parabolic one that automatically focuses sunlight at StarLink satellites
They’re too stupid to understand bodies of water are blue because they reflect the sky. Typical failure to grasp a simple idea by the a profoundly stupid and incurious child rapist.
… That isn’t why water is blue though…
I know you think you’re being clever, but the sky is blue because it reflects the water, too. It only works with sunlight, which is why everything would look blue if you stood in a small room with water, air, and the sun.
… That isn’t why the sky is blue though…
The sky is blue due to differential scattering. Blue light scatters more than red. That’s also why sunsets are red. It’s the remaining light passing through the atmosphere.
Water is often blue due to reflecting the sky. It also has a slight blue tint. This is only obvious in large, deep bodies. It’s why the sea around some tropical islands looks so blue. They are volcanoes, so the water drops off rapidly. That much water has a significant blue colour. The sky then adds to it.
The sky then adds to it.
AH HA! So you admit that I’m right that the sky is blue, which makes the water blue, which makes the sky blue! If only we could harness this perpetual blue for energy production…
The sea doesn’t make the sky blue. The sky simply is blue for most of the day.
The sky simply is blue for most of the day.
Yeah, when the water is blue.
^For real, though, I’m starting to feel bad about this persona I started, and I’m probably gonna stop now.^
You shouldn’t have started your comment with an insult to their intelligence and then immediately talked bollocks. Now I’m duty-bound to correct your arrogant nonsense.
the sky is blue because it reflects the water
Nope. It’s blue because the atmosphere filters out bluer light.
It only works with sunlight
Nope. There’s nothing special about sunlight, you can reproduce the effect experimentally with a torch and a tube of water
everything would look blue if you stood in a small room with water, air, and the sun.
What? How you gonna fit the sun into a small room?
Wow. You criticized me and then practically admitted at the end that you’ve got no proof. If you can’t even conceive of how to put the sun in a small room with yourself, some air, and some water, then how can you criticize my clearly flawless logic??
The sky is blue because water is blue because the sky is blue, which you can prove by standing in a small room with the sun! It’s so easy to understand that you might think a toddler came up with it!
And don’t you tell me about filtering, light diffusion in clouds, refraction, and all your other science lies! The sky is born blue, and every night it catches on fire, which is why sunsets are red, and the “stars” are embers on the charred remains, and thunder storms happen when the sky screams and cries from pain. It’s all very logical when you anthropomorphize everything and stop paying attention to your own words.
What? Ooohhhhh was I being autistic again?
Nah, I agree with prole: it probably just wasn’t as funny to anyone else as it was to me.
I think it just wasn’t funny so it wasn’t clear that it was a joke.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
You also usually need special procedures if you can’t spray it all in one go. Spraying more solvents on top of bonded coatings will absolutely disrupt the bond. It also might not bond to itself very well.
So, in what way is this not a distraction from child rape and mass murder from starting pointless wars (to distract from child rape) ?
Back to basics ppl, unconscionable abuse and straight up murder, or, a water feature in Washington.
Yeah I agree that this is a distraction from far more serious shit.
Unlike many other times when the thing people claim is a distraction is in itself as serious as a heart attack.
Yet I don’t see any “NOW where’s the Epstein files” meme here. It’s like they purposely only post it in posts about serious issues.
Unconscionable abuse and straight up murder, and, a water feature in Washington.
You can talk about all three just fine. Not only do Republicans love a pedophile, but they also love an incompetent and corrupt pedophile.
The owner of the Greenwater company is also in the Epstein files so it all ties together nicely.
The owner of the Greenwater company is also in the Epstein files so it all ties together nicely.
This is simply a lie, please be intellectually honest in such important matters. The closest link is that the pool guy’s dad hired the same law firm as Epstein once.
could further enflame mounting criticism that the project was rushed and potentially improperly completed.
Potentially?
We were promised a result that “will last for at least 50 years” and “if you had a knife, you couldn’t even cut it” that didn’t make it a month. This situation is my current litmus test to determine if I’m interacting with a propaganda bot or not. This job being improperly completed is potentially the most certain fact in the news today.
We knew it before the work even began.
Sika Corp. did not reply to CNN’s request for comment.
They (wisely) turned down the job, so why would they comment now? Why did CNN even ask? I’m sure that whoever made the ultimate decision to pass on Trump’s little fiasco is smiling.
A responsible journalist would be happier if Sika agreed with the other side’s quoting of them. We currently only have the retelling of a conversation from one of the two parties. It’s a pretty credible retelling of the conversation, but we can’t be sure unless both parties agree thats how the conversation went.
Probably objected to the requirement to kick back half the project’s funding to Trump.
Trump probably has all the kickback he needs from the Iran deal.
The point of a game of monopoly isn’t to have a comfortable cushion of cash, the point is to drive everyone else into abject poverty and own the board.
Even so, part of $14m is a rounding error after his other grifting. Doesn’t quite compare to bouncing the stock market every other week or the $300b Iran deal or the bribe lawsuits that the media companies had to get the judge to not dismiss so they could “settle”.
Imagine begging a judge to not let you win a case.
That’s exactly what I said. It’s not about the money.
He runs in all the circles where all the money in the universe is never enough.
Ironically, the only solution may be to drain the swamp and start over?
Don’t stop at the reflecting pool
No, you misheard. He never wanted to drain the swamp. The plan was to train the swamp!
If they mean this Sika, turning it down for feasibility concerns, means it’s not feasible.
