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Peroxide is a bleaching agent
A particularly strong oxidizer at that. Which is why the paint came up in chips
I really doubt it. Maybe in the direct area that is was poured into. But they'd literally have to have dumped swimming pools worth of it into it for it to do anything.
The pool takes 6 Million gallons of water to fill. They were pouring in peroxide by hand. By hand. They were essentially pouring gallons of water into water. When hydrogen peroxide is exposed to any heat (like from the fucking sun in the summer) it degrades significantly faster. The hydrogen peroxide just turns into water while releasing oxygen gas.
It could have reacted with the paint directly where it was being poured in before getting diluted. But I think the paint job was just garbage in the first place. It probably wasn't sealed correctly. Given how entire sheets of it were just floating around.
Edit: Wikipedia and it's sources agree with me.
According to a variety of experts interviewed by a variety of sources, the application of hydrogen peroxide to reduce algae in the Reflecting Pool was likely too diluted to account for the magnitude of the damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial_Reflecting_Pool
Not to mention that hydrogen peroxide readily reacts with organic matter (which is how it kills stuff) and the pool was full of algae to react with.
My guess is that either a layer of grey crud grew over the liner, or the dye/liner was never water safe to begin with.
Reading into the Wikipedia sources it seems the type of sealant used was liked not cured sufficiently before it was exposed to the elements. (Makes sense, the average pool isn't getting cooked in direct sunlight like the reflecting pool was).
It's like a home chef trying to cook in an industrial kitchen for 1000s of people. Trump's pool guy just repeated the process used for personal pools on a project way beyond the scale they were qualified for. Shit didn't work how they expected it to in a completely different climate and and scale.
It short. "Trump's friend" was completely unqualified. Shocker.
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Frankly, so is the sun.
Trump has said, without citing evidence, that vandals made a “350-foot gash” in the liner and caused other problems. No large slash marks were immediately visible Wednesday from the Washington Monument view. It was not possible to do a more up-close inspection of the entire pool due to a dark fence surrounding the perimeter.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, said that after the water is drained and debris is cleaned from Independence Day fireworks, the plan for the pool is straightforward: “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.” He was speaking with conservative podcaster Katie Miller.
They believe their own lies, don't they? It would be easier if it were just straightforward dishonesty, but it has turned into a cult of shared delusion, and it's in charge of the USA.
I read once that Trump isn’t just a liar; he’s a bullshitter. The nuance was that lying requires some consistency, some standard of a coherent story; lying requires knowing and caring about the truth and choosing a different story. Bullshitting doesn’t; bullshitting is just saying whatever you want whenever you want, regardless.
It helped me better understand their actions. And also somehow makes it worse that they believe the bullshit, since it doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny or logical thought at all.
He is also a genuine moron who probably actually believes half of the stupid shit he says.
His intelligence here doesn’t matter. That’s the important point about bullshitting. He’s a willful bullshitter, and always has been.
Yes, that’s the definition of bullshit. Things said without caring if they are true.
I think many people don’t know this. I didn’t, until trump became president.
AI bullshits all the time. Because it doesn’t have the capacity to care.
Yes, he is a bullshitter. I think that distinction comes from Harry Frankfurt:
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What a way to remember Lincoln…
If this level of carelessness happened around a confederate monument republicans would lose their shit.
If 0.0001% of this carelessness was done under a Dem focks nooz would be running it nonstop and the reds would be filing articles of impeachment over it
They know that, too. They don’t even care to hide it anymore.
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The president at first suggested his renovations would cost $1.5 million, but the bill ballooned to more than $16 million by June.
Trump had said the repairs would last a century, but within days of the project’s initial completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.
The Trumpy lie followed by definitive proof of it being totally false is becoming increasingly rapid-fire: bait and switch, bait and switch... seems he can't conceal his trickery long enough before the next news cycle anymore. It's quite astonishing.
"trickery" implies he's clever and doing things intentionally.
Yeah, it's not like he's some evil genius. Serial abusers aren't trained manipulators. It's just kind of built into their character. It's automatic. And it's not even like he's intentionally hiring smarter people to be evil for him. His shit personality just draws those kinds of people to him.
None of this is sophisticated. It's just that a terrifying percentage of Americans are dogshit stupid, so low effort evil works.
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There's literally no interval between bait and switches so short that it won't work on conservatives/regressives.
He could tell them dogs aren't real and 30 seconds later tell them they are real but that cats aren't and they'd be fully onboard.
It's a cult thing.
A large part of the cult mentality is consistently reinforcing that your group is in on some big secret that the rest of the world is clueless to. It quickly becomes a self-sustaining feedback loop where the cult will go along with wild things just to keep up the idea that they’re in the know.
This is further reinforced with messaging that the outside world is hostile, and safety can only be found within the cult. This is actually a large part of why Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses do their door-knocking. They have already been primed to expect hostility from the people answering the door, and that hostility only reinforces the idea that the outside world is dangerous and ignorant. And we see this with modern MAGAts now, because they have been primed to expect hostility whenever they try to bring up anything that outs them as MAGA.
Not only did the vandals slash it, but they’ve also painted it grey while it was filled!
That new underwater paint really has came a long way!
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At least the Romans had entertaining circuses not whatever the fuck this is
It's empty now, we can use it as a gladiator pit.
I vote that each executive branch fight it out in there. But also add lions for some spicy entertainment?
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Wonder how many school lunches or college degrees that 'flag blue' color would have paid for ...
So far the project, originally estimated by the administration to cost up to $2M, sits at $16M and growing.
At $5 per school lunch, that's 3.2M school lunches. With the average US in-state bachelor's degree at $11.4K, that's 1403 degrees.
For context, there is an estimated 22M children receiving subsidized school lunches. Given the wealth of the US, that figure is baffling.
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Oh wow, that guy who looks like he ties damsels to railroads for fun didn't end up doing a good job on the pool?
That seems rather unfair to Snidley Whiplash
I wonder whose nephew/cousin/kid owns the contracted companies who "fixed" the initial "repairs"
This shit is so blatant old school new york slumlord grift
No joke. This is the boss of the contractors. I get Batman villain vibes…
How is that not Danny Devito?
Someone else in this thread says he looks like the type of guy who ties damsels to train tracks.
Now I think more about it he’s a good fit for a Looney Tunes villain.
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If a “gray, drained pool, devoid of even a glimmer of reflection” isn’t an apt analogy for MAGAmurica, I don’t know what is…
Enough is enough, let the parks service fix it and send Donald Trump the bill.
Nah, don’t let competence take over, lives aren’t lost. Is funnier to watch them repeatedly try, cock it up, receive scorn.
lives aren't lost.
yet
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This was a MUCH Better use of Tax Dollars then Feeding STARVING AMERICANS!
-Republicans on Welfare!
Importantly, it's a dark grey.
One of the reasons they said that algae was blooming is that the blue bottom resulted in the pool heating up. A white bottom reflects the light. A blue bottom absorbs more, so it heats up more. A dark grey bottom will heat up even more than a light blue, so unless they fix the colour, they'll have algae problems as soon as there's water in it.
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Painting it blue was always a childish idea.
Republican trailer trash.
I wish people could come together and say collectively to 'news outlets': "no, stop reporting on this, it is not news" and they would cease pushing the asinine minutiae of idiocy which distracts us and dilutes our conversations about what should be done and return their spotlight onto the important events happening.
No. This news is something people can understand. They can see the failure and understand it.
Now try to explain to a normie what false slates are.
I don't know, how does "Convicted rapist and alleged child molesting US president contends that the color of a publicly-funded overpriced underwater paint job is closer to blue than gray" sound?
Does it still sound like news or should we be looking into the actual Epstein files?
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ANTIFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
man - they gonna just keep fixing the problem and milking us - huh?
Creating a problem then repeatedly "fixing" it has been the Republican strategy all my life.
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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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