How do you botch that which is already thoroughly botched? Can a construction project that has had millions spent on it for extensive de-botching be subsequently rebotched? To listen to the contractor working on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool tell it in government documents, the Trump administration is discovering new and exciting forms of botched work as the project drags onward, many of which were previously unknown to science.
The pool is still drained, if you were wondering, as it has been for months at this point, and daily work continues apace despite Donald Trump promising in early August that it would soon be refilled. The contractor paid to do the job, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, has apparently kept a steady stream of “my bad” documentation coming to the Trump administration, according to documents unearthed by The New York Times. After months of work, their main triumph to this point is that they’ve described in greater detail exactly how they screwed up the pool the first time they did the work. And the second time they did the work. And maybe the third time? It’s not immediately clear what attempt we’re actually on at this point, given that it feels a bit like the repeated afterlives and purgatories that blend seamlessly together and loop back around in The Good Place.
"CSI: Reflecting Pool – The Usual Suspect: Incompetence."
— 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 (@sundaedivine.lol) 3:58 PM · Sep 11, 2026
At the very least, Atlantic Industrial Coatings has demonstrated in these documents just how profoundly stupid the Justice Department was in rushing to indict a slew of people for “vandalizing” the reflecting pool back in early July, only to be forced to withdraw those indictments less than a month later while acknowledging that the construction work done in the pool was “hasty and botched,” in the DOJ’s own words. Charges were dropped against the handful of people charged with being generally in the vicinity of the pool while Trump was feeling embarrassed, most notably the charges against former U.S. Olympian David Hearn, who was facing felony charges of destruction of federal property.
Trump, for what it’s worth, still continued clinging to claims of Hearn’s guilt in particular even after his Department of Justice Dropped the case and admitted it was wrong, claiming that Hearn was seen “violently” ripping at the peeling reflecting pool lining. Hilariously, in the very same Truth Social posting, Trump simultaneously described the lining he previously said would last a lifetime and be impervious to weapons as “somewhat delicate,” and admitted that “there is no video or proof” of the supposed vandalism any of the people were initially charged with. So, uh … what exactly were those indictments based on again?
The documents reviewed by NYT, meanwhile, detail the many problems that Atlantic Industrial Coatings has informed the administration it has encountered in the course of the haphazard job, which they acknowledge was rushed in an impractical timeline in an attempt to get it done for July 4 celebrations. Perhaps the most elemental of those problems is the fact that they were apparently using improper materials for the job this entire time: Atlantic admitted in a mid-August report that “the repair plan laid out in the contract called for the layers of liner to include two chemicals that turned out to be incompatible.” When one of said chemicals was laid on top of the other, the heat of the second repeatedly caused the layer laid first to blister and peel away from the pool. According to NYT, “The contractor said it had not expected that outcome because it was very uncommon to mix the two products in that way.” Which is all to say, we’ve apparently got a pool company out here, working off bad instructions and advice, attempting to mix together random chemicals that no pool worker has ever apparently thought to combine until this moment. Should we feel lucky that the pool didn’t somehow burn down?
Trump f*cked up the reflecting pool by paying exorbitantly for shoddy work.
Can’t wait to see the ballroom 🙄
— Lazy Circles Esq (@lazycirclesesq.bsky.social) 5:28 PM · Sep 11, 2026
Since August, workers from Atlantic have apparently been tearing up and removing layers of the previous reflecting pool liner, to the point of needing to take “razor blades, hammers and crowbars” to it to get up individual bits of liner still stuck to the concrete. Only then could they start applying new layers of the coating … only to run into a new issue related to workers sweating on the coating, which was also somehow causing problems. The documents literally describe how the worker in question was wrapping “cloth around his head and wrists” to keep his dripping sweat from somehow botching this cursed pool’s renovation yet again. I can only imagine the Trump administration, meanwhile, is patting itself on the back for opting for the full warranty on the $14.7 million no-bid contract that Atlantic was given for the job. That warranty is most definitely going to pay for itself before this is all over.
That said, how many more goes at this one task do you think Atlantic Industrial Coatings could possibly be afforded by a Trump administration that presumably wants the headache of this story going on since the spring to finally go away? I can only imagine that this titanic tug of war between the administration’s refusal to admit it failed at something, and its instinct to punish contractors, must be resulting in cognitive dissonance on an epic scale. There’s enough collective embarrassment here to fill the pool many times over. I’ve long since given up on hoping that it never finds its way into the headlines again.
