Add David Hearn to Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of enemies of the state. The Bethesda man was out for a bike ride in Washington, D.C., last Friday and decided to spin over to the Reflecting Pool see how its new, Trump-ordained “American flag blue” color struck him. He noticed that a piece of the new blue liner was partly detached from the pool’s bottom (it’s only 18 inches deep at the edges), and he reached down to see what it felt like, he told The Washington Post.
According to ESPN, Hearn said that he “briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker told him to.” Unhappily, a conservative journalist named Emily Miller—surely you haven’t forgotten her 2013 classic Emily Gets Her Gun: But Obama Wants to Take Yours—was on the scene, and she took a two-minute video of the 67-year-old Hearn, a former U.S. Olympic team canoe racer. Before he knew it, Park Police officers arrested him and charged him with destruction of government property. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”
Trump posted on Saturday night about arrests of “multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations [sic] magnificent Reflecting Pool.” The Post sought comment on this point from the Park Police but got no response.
You’d think a guy who just lost a war would have bigger matters on his mind, but to Trump, matters don’t come any bigger than the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center, because they are about the thing that is most important to him: his monstrously large but porcelain-fragile ego. I don’t condone vandalism of government property, so if anyone did that, fine, arrest them (though it sounds like Hearn, whose hearing is slated for July 9, didn’t). But I submit to you that the real vandalism here is being committed by Trump.
Apparently, the Reflecting Pool had—still has—very serious drainage issues. So fine. Fix those. But the idea that the color of the pool was somehow inadequate never occurred to anyone until Trump came along. I’d imagine that over on Newsmax and One America News Network (Miller’s former employer, for what it’s worth), they’re selling the makeover as another shimmering example of Trump’s courageous patriotism that drives the woke liberals insane. But the design change is really chiefly about his vanity. He just aches to leave monuments to and reminders of himself across the nation’s capital. Or maybe, like Narcissus, he wants to visit the pool and stare endlessly at his own reflection.
In any case, this is roughly the 10,362nd matter that, in any other administration, would be a huge scandal. Trump told us it would cost $1.3 billion. Current records show that contracts the government has signed for work on the pool now total $14.8 million. One contract, for the water purification system, was made to a vendor on a no-bid basis who happened to be a Trump donor. In addition to contributing to Trump, John Cafaro also happens to have a mansion in Palm Beach near Mar-a-Lago. He also seems to have decided that “oily Dick Tracy villain” should be his personal aesthetic.
Another no-bid contract went to a company that did work on a swimming pool at Trump’s Virginia golf club. That company, Atlantic Industrial Holdings, had never before received a contract from the federal government and according to records obtained by The New York Times is charging a 20 percent profit margin, when such margins typically run 6 to 12 percent.
Rigged contracts, donors, ridiculous cost overruns. But that’s not even the worst of it. There are concerns that the workers who did the resurfacing may have been exposed to hazardous chemicals, and that the masks they wore were inadequate to protect them from the tiny particulates in the air. The Guardian reported on this back in May, when an official from the union that represents the workers said, “The chemicals are hazardous. My concern is usually the level of risk when it’s rushed. Are workers taking the rightful steps to protect themselves?”
The next Democratic (God willing) president will have quite a lot on his or her plate, goodness knows, and there will be more “important” matters to attend to than what Trump is trying to do to our nation’s capital. But the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center and the proposed arch at Arlington Cemetery and the White House ballroom—and don’t forget the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, formerly known rather boringly as the United States Institute of Peace, rebranded by the State Department last year—are plenty important. These are corrupt actions (remember that the ballroom went through none of the usual required processes), and they’re grotesque, Third-World dictator moves that are completely inappropriate for a democracy.
So the Democratic presidential contenders will need to be asked at their candidate forums and debates: What are you going to do about the ballroom? The arch, if it’s being built by then? Will you tear these things down? Will you return the Institute of Peace to its old name? Will you pressure Congress to pass a law stipulating that the Kennedy Center will be named for John F. Kennedy, and for him only, for all time?
These might not sound like the biggest priorities, and in fact, they’re not. Last week, I wrote about how the key litmus test for Democratic presidential contenders was ending the stranglehold of billionaires over our politics. That’s a big priority. Still the Democratic candidates’ answers to these questions about Trump’s vandalism of the District is a test in itself. It will tell us a lot about their character, their disposition, and how hard they’re willing to fight on the big stuff. In the meantime, keep the Reflecting Pool green. And free David Hearn.
