Deflecting Pool update: Phantom gash, arrested Olympian, White House lies | Opinion
In the United States of America, curiosity and criticism are not a crime.
Our president would do well to learn that.
Last week, I wrote a column about Wichita-area conservatives sharing an obviously fake social-media post blaming nonexistent Antifa operatives for the algae bloom at the Deflecting Pool (formerly known as the Reflecting Pool) in Washington.
A lot has happened since then.
The “American Flag blue” swimming-pool coating that Donald Trump ordered up for the nation’s 250th birthday is coming off in strips and chunks.
And the president has fully embraced the dubious proposition that left-wing vandalism is at fault — in person and in unhinged rants on his hilariously misnamed “Truth Social” network.
Where’s the gash, Mr. Trump?
“They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” Trump posted Saturday. “They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
By Monday morning, the supposed 250-foot gash had become a 300-foot gash on Truth Social. By Monday afternoon at a White House press conference, it was 350 feet.
One reporter who asked where the gash is (because journalists had been looking all day and couldn’t find it) was told by Trump to “go to the parks department” and “see the secretary.”
To say that Trump’s explanation is implausible is an insult to implausibility.
Despite 24-7 camera coverage, the only ones ever spotted pouring corrosive chemicals into the pool were federal workers dumping pails of hydrogen peroxide in to try to kill the algae that dyed the water a sickly shade of green.
The far more credible explanation is that the pool job was simply botched by the no-bid contractors his administration hired to do the work — including one of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago neighbors, a campaign donor who owns a company called “Greenwater Services.” You can’t make this stuff up.
But in Donald Trump’s America, presidential incompetence is never an acceptable explanation for anything (even when it’s true).
To bolster his believers’ belief, Trump needed some arrests.
The administration surged law enforcement and National Guard troops to the pool to make an example of anyone even touching the peeling paint. At least five have been arrested and another five are “under investigation,” Trump said Monday.
The only arrestee who’s been publicly identified so far is David Hearn, a three-time U.S. Olympic team canoe racer (and isn’t it an odd crop of radical saboteurs we’re growing this year).
Hearn told the Associated Press he’d just finished a long bike ride and stopped by the pool on his way home to check it out. When he touched one of the floating strips of the rubbery plastic coating, he was surrounded by soldiers and police who slapped cuffs on him and took him to jail for five hours, before releasing him with a scheduled court date.
I’d hate to be the assistant U.S. attorney who has to come up with legally feasible reasoning as to how a 67-year-old bicyclist, without tools or supplies, could damage the supposedly industrial-grade lining of a 6.5-million gallon body of water — especially since the president himself drove over it in a 10-ton armored limo accompanied by a full motorcade, to stage a self-congratulatory photo op before the pool was refilled.
Local reaction and piquant odor
In online comments on my original column, the usual suspects charged me with TDS, the make-believe condition also known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s the term right-wing wingnuts apply to anyone who doesn’t just nod along with whatever nonsense the White House spews and actually tries to make sense of this chaotic administration.
My favorite comment (anonymous, as are most of the comments on our website) was this: “Just curious Mr Lefler, is there anything about our current president that you like?”
To which I replied, “Help me out here, name one significant thing he’s done this term that:
- Didn’t come with a body count.
- Or didn’t turn into a debacle.
- Or didn’t despoil the environment or national landmarks.
- Or didn’t enrich him, his family and/or his cronies.
- Or didn’t damage American democracy.
- Or didn’t exploit prejudice for political gain.”
But then a reader came up with a better answer than mine: “His piquant body odor?”
I can’t legitimately comment on that. I’ve been in the same auditorium with the man, but I never got that close.
It would have to be a hardy aroma indeed to compete with the stench of the lies emanating from the White House, when talking about why the Deflecting Pool got so fetid right after a $14 million “improvement” project.
You can smell that from half a continent away.
This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Deflecting Pool update: Phantom gash, arrested Olympian, White House lies | Opinion."
