On Sunday night, John Oliver took aim at Trump’s sparsely attended Great American State Fair before focusing his ire on Trump’s other recent catastrophe: the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
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“Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool continues to be an absolute trainwreck,” offered the “Last Week Tonight” host. “It’s been plagued by enormous pools of algae, large chunks of blue sealant have been peeling off and just this week, a trio of dead ducks were discovered there, prompted a spokesperson for the Center of Biological Diversity to say Trump was ‘wasting taxpayer money turning the reflecting pool into a giant duck death trap.’”
On top of all that, renovations to the pool have ballooned up to $16 million after Trump awarded a company owned by a donor, John J. Cafaro, a no-bid contract to install a new water-cleaning system for the pool. Cafaro has donated plenty of money to Trump over the years, including a $250,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fundraising Committee in 2020.
“And in response to all of this, Trump shifted into full blame deflection-mode this week, claiming that there had been sabotage and railing on social media against ‘a crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor,’” Oliver continued.
Yes, when it comes to the peeling liner, Trump claimed, without any evidence, that an unidentified vandal had “slit right through it” with “probably a box-cutter or a knife of some kind,” and when asked for proof, Trump replied, “Let’s put it this way: When you have a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that’s proof?”
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“No I don’t!” exclaimed Oliver, adding, “Experts have noted it would be very challenging to cut that liner, and it was far more likely that the repairs were done ‘just too hastily.’ It also may not have helped that during them Trump literally drove over the pool in his motorcade. And yet, Trump kept pushing the sabotage conspiracy and his supporters kept trying to sell it when the evidence was just laughably weak.”
Cut to Fox News’ Jesse Watters, who pointed to grainy video of a young man and a young woman putting their hands in the reflecting pool, asking, “We don’t know who these people are… But what are they doing with their hands in the pool? Are they cutting the lining? Are they peeling the paint? We don’t know if they’re committing a crime. They’ll probably tell you they dropped their wedding ring.”
“Wait… is that the best you’ve got? That is pathetic!” exclaimed Oliver. “As for ‘they’ll probably tell you they dropped their wedding ring,’ yeah, maybe they did. Maybe those people at the reflecting pool dropped their wedding ring after leaving their wife for a 25-year-old coworker. Jesse would know what that is like! It’s actually one of the many fun facts you can learn about on his Wikipedia page, along with: ‘In November 2024, Watters stated that he had not been invited to his mother’s home for Thanksgiving.’” (Watters indeed left his first wife, Noelle Inguagiato, after confessing to having an affair with his much younger producer Emma DiGiovine, who he later married.)
“And I do not blame his mom for that,” Oliver said of the Thanksgiving dinner rejection. “She’s a child psychologist and she tried her best. Sometimes you just get one that sucks! But it does now make much more sense that Jesse will willingly humiliate himself by pursuing the approval of a withholding parental figure that will simply never come.”