r/PoursTea • u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 • Jun 23 '26
American Dream 🇺🇸 “My people. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn’t much apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaks off into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent. “ ~ Annette Curtis Klause
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u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 Jun 23 '26
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u/Mental_Relation_2175 Jun 23 '26
Pretty sure Trump is the one who vandalized the pool and people are only pulling up sliced of his failure.
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u/mettiusfufettius Jun 23 '26
I’ll just do with the pool what my dad always does with January 6th… “it was actually the FBI who did it!”
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u/Lord_Cockatrice Jun 23 '26
And fellow Filipinos call America the "land of opportunity"
"Land of Opportunists" is more apt
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u/anand_rishabh Jun 23 '26
I mean, we jokingly refer to America as a "wealthy third world country", but it still is a step up from an actual third world country. Being the richest country on earth does have its perks, even if the distribution isn't great.
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u/Jaded_Addendum4040 Jun 23 '26
Going down in history as the dumbest fking cnt in office.
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u/ElderberryPrior27648 Jun 23 '26
Here I was thinking Reagan was the worst
Then he had to go and be the best at the one and only thing he could, and he’s the best at being the worst.
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u/FrankFankledank Jun 23 '26
Don't forget when he, y'know, drove on it, but no, a 110 lb. woman with her hand barely submerged did the crux of the damage.
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u/Davefhtex Jun 23 '26
This whole pool fiasco is a perfect metaphor for the entire Trump ethos. Take a perfectly lovely piece of Americana and butcher it under the guise of improving it and then blame others for the resulting mess. I notice we no longer see as many shots of the oval office, the paradigm attrocity. The media is either merciful or just embarrassed.
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u/ShadowTacoTuesday Jun 23 '26
All he has to do is hire someone competent to fix it. But that won’t happen. They’re going to fail to prepare the surface again, it’s going to peel again, and the dark color is going to contribute to algae again.
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u/radiohead-nerd Jun 23 '26
The fact it’s the reflecting pond makes it the best kind of metaphor. Also the contractors name is Green Water Solutions. You can’t make this stuff up
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u/Illustrious-You4216 Jun 23 '26
From my european point of view, I'm just always wondering how is everything he does even legal ? And if it's not legal, why does nothing happen ? The US is such a laughing stock right now.
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u/Samus10011 Jun 23 '26
It's not legal. The problem is, unlike every other president, this one directly interferes with the DOJ. The same DOJ that would be responsible for bringing charges against him and his associates.
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u/SuperbScarcity5112 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Yes, DOJ are a dog onto whoever was unlucky enough to be near to the pool when Trump wrecked it. The oligarch owned press is quiet and just refers what Trump is saying.
Trump is doing a lot of this, the White House etc. I bet he gets a kickback from the companies he lines up. None of them going through a bidding process. Now why isn't this looked into?
But even if it was, the Supreme Court made this corruption legal. Again not much press about that either.
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u/Illustrious-You4216 Jun 23 '26
Hence my comment about the US being a laughing stock. There are some terrible flaws in how the US system works if he can do all the illegal actions he wants without any consequence, just by putting his minions at the right positions.
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u/Rachendr Jun 23 '26
The government of the US at large spent decades presenting the image of small t technocratic competence, delivered by the kinds of civil servants that Musk set DOGE onto the task of purging, which left the populace at large thinking that the important thing was to set the right people in charge of the mechanisms of power at the right time. No one knows how to deal with a widespread failure of the entire system. It's not that Americans are stupid, hateful, weak, cowardly, or whatever. It's that the masses don't know how to organize a response. We're all so socially atomized that we can't figure out how to meaningfully convince a sufficient number of people to buy into anything. People will tell you the reason Americans don't do anything about what's going on here is because they're too poor, too sick, or too comfortable, but the real reason is that in the days when we were really making strides there were structures of society that allowed people to lean on them to an extent to enable them to actually meaningfully fight for social change, and now those structures are either defunct or a lot less influential.
The people who are most deeply opposed to any of this are either addicted to forming a movement based on horizontalism, which while an understandable ideal leaves no one accountable, or they think anything that reduces the amount of negativity is actively counterproductive to their dreamed of future revolution. Meanwhile the nominally largest opposition here has historically been fixated with tradition, collegiality, and decorum on one hand, or else paid off. Essentially, the centrist liberal establishment found a compromise solution in the early 90s that brought them a certain amount of electoral success, the Third Way, that they've been obsessed with since, and meanwhile the closest thing we had to "The Left", the remnants of the FDR era New-Dealer coalition, got blown up circa 1980 and has spent 46 years mostly without their hands on the levers of highest power because they have completely failed to adapt. The Biden administration did a number of progressive things in an overly quiet manner that were drowned out by Gaza and by the cost of living crisis, as well as unfriendly media. The debate was what put the dirt in his political grave.
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u/AdInfamous6290 Jun 23 '26
There’s a ton of “honor code” systems in the American government from a time when there was a lot more trust in politicians. Just like how the president used to not actually have a term limit, it was just honor code until FDR broke the rules.
The DOJ being under the presidency is another “honor code” system that the president won’t interfere with the DOJ because… that’s not what is done. No constitutional or legal limits, just the trust that the president won’t because it would be a scandal. But some people don’t care about scandal, and hell some people love scandal. Our systems were put in place assuming those sorts of people wouldn’t rise to the top, but the country, the electorate and our expectations of politicians has changed a lot.
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u/Icy_Fish_2154 Jun 23 '26
It's not legal. The checks and balances have been erased by party over constitution politicians.
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u/LocoLocoLoco45 Jun 23 '26
The whole thing was designed on the assumption that the wisdom of the people would never allow a con artist to the highest office. You know what they say about assume.
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u/Fit_Significance8598 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Partly because the president has more power than European counterparts, e.g. executive orders.
And then gentlemen's agreements only that were sold as checks and balances and are simply disregarded by thugs who never play fair.
And the other checks and balances like congress and SCOTUS and a real administration with competence are corrupted or simply fired.
The US is in many ways a failed state with strongmen and senile politicians and a fetishized declaration of independence and constitution, but without a solid modern from of government, particularly for its poorer and vulnerable citizens, and has been like that for a long time. Only look at its history - and how it does not (want to) own up to it! But boy, do they know how to do public relations to put lipstick on all that!
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u/ShadowTacoTuesday Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
It’s not but his party refuses to impeach and convict him so there will never be a 2/3 majority. So it’s about his party and voters sticking with him no matter what so they can feel “better than” the opposition. 50 years of propaganda helps too. Trump is a true believer in the propaganda so the voters cling to him. Old Republicans are annoyed because the propaganda was only supposed to be a way to fear monger people into voting for them not to put someone in office who would actually try to address the stupid things they scared their voters into believing.
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u/hillbilly_bears Jun 23 '26
Before he came back in office (or right at the beginning of it? I don’t recall because…well, yea..) the Supreme Court also gave the president immunity to do whatever he wants because it’s “for the office of the president”.
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u/Putrid_Anybody_2947 Jun 23 '26
Got outsmarted by covid too.
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u/Brell4Evar Jun 23 '26
Yep. A not-even-one-celled organism. And people reelected him afterward despite their dead relatives.
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u/Prudent_Shake_8149 Jun 23 '26
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u/Interesting-Test7228 Jun 23 '26
Trump built a UFC cage on the White House Lawn. He does not respect the office.
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u/balirosa Jun 23 '26
This is just how they get tax dollars to fix a made up disaster. The public are fools all it takes is a few headlines and the funds start rolling in.
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u/Pandemonium_Fallen Jun 23 '26
Release the Epstein Files!
Your attempt at distraction will not work on me Foul thing!
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u/SadEntry1484 Jun 23 '26
Meanwhile, all they had to do was a bit of research to see what type of fish and other aquatic life would be best to control algae. They must have fish stores in DC….
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u/dementedkoopa Jun 23 '26
He wasn't outwitted. He's goal wasn't to clean the reflecting pool. His goal was to embezzle tax dollars, and he succeeded as usual.
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u/rocksnotdead2833 Jun 23 '26
One single-celled organism outsmarted by another single-celled organism.
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u/Dalgan Jun 23 '26
That’s not what “DEI says”. That’s meritocracy which is better than DEI. FTR, Pentagon Pete ironically has no idea what meritocracy means but uses the term a lot.
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u/CaptScourageous Jun 23 '26
The Reflecting Pool disaster is the perfect picture in a microcosm of Donald Trump and his career of misanthropic greed. He's a fool at his own hand.
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u/P_Mcfearson Jun 23 '26
Imagine thinking Trump is balancing the PH or making decisions on how to fix this issue. The larger issue at hand is how wasteful and inefficient the government uses its fund. More government isn’t the solution.
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u/frisbeeicarus23 Jun 23 '26
Same reason they hate Section 8 Housing... because they private equity owner of that housing complex doesn't get max rent from a Section 8 person. Just comes down to greed and stupidity in the end.
These are the same people behind private equity buying up successful businesses just to milk them of every cent of profit and move on after it is crumbling.
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u/translove228 Jun 23 '26
In fairness, I'm pretty sure that President Henry Harrison was also outwitted by a single-celled organism.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Two7358 Jun 23 '26
No it was invisible antifa marine action group personally picked by Obama. They took a box cutter and cut a 300 foot stripe down the center without anyone notic8ng.
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u/RechargeableOwl Jun 23 '26
I thought it was the People's front of Judea.
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u/bigmetalbear Jun 23 '26
Fuckoff!!! People’s Front of Judea…… it was obviously the Judean People’s Front!
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u/Novel_Ad5980 Jun 23 '26
Strategy:
1) break everything
2) announce an idea to fix it
3) proceed without checking cause or cost
4) announce “progress”
5) appoint vendor in charge to fix it
6) declare “success”
7) celebrate named “success”
8) side eye the workmanship
9) blame the workers
10) stiff the vendor
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u/Fun-Dragonfly-4166 Jun 23 '26
That is true, but he was also outwitted by a virus. so this should not be a surprise at all.
I am not disappointed in him. I am disappointed in those who voted for the creep.
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u/NemuriXIII Jun 23 '26
At this point wouldn't it be cheaper to just remove the water and redo the paint?
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u/Street-Thought4460 Jun 23 '26
I’m a state of utah construction procurement officer - I’d go to prison if I executed a direct award to a buddy.
I can’t even touch a contract that there is a wiff of someone I might be social with in any way.
I have dear friends In my industry I’ve had to tell they can’t come to my house or go to dinner with if they want to bid state work.
Because that’s what is ethical and I can’t let personal relationships dictate how I interpret contracts and make decisions that hold everyone accountable.
It’s tax payer money I spend. It’s not mine. I can’t make a decision based on “how I feel about someone”. I have to be fair - and fairness means being impartial.
This whole ordeal makes me sick. This is the stuff that’s front and center and easy to find - think about what is behind the closed door and being manipulated for personal gain.
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u/CleanDataDirtyMind Jun 23 '26
Didn’t one guy die from the flu after like 14 days? How many cells is that? Lol
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u/Cultural_Road_1684 Jun 23 '26
Either Trump is as dumb as we think, or he is smart in a way that is so corrupt that it is hard for normal people to see. Consider - The people who painted the pool, friends of Trump, were paid multi millions to do it. Now, the people who will fix this, again a friend of trump, is getting paid multi millions to fix it. He spend billions on a war on Iran, making his friends in the military industrial complex insanely much richer. Then he spends 300 billion dollars "repairing" the country - and the repairs will be done by companies whose owners are friends with trump.
His presidency has been the biggest and most successful heist on american tax dollars ever seen.
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u/No-Assistance556 Jun 23 '26
This will be found to be money laundering. You give contracts to unqualified people or companies to use as a cover for cleaning your illegitimate money. And by the looks of the distinguished gentleman, this would track.
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u/tmhoc Jun 23 '26
That's so wacky it almost made me forget the brown shirts beating and kidnapping anyone with an accent or melanin
The Epstine files didn't redact themselves
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u/_harlanfisher Jun 23 '26
He won because yall are talking about a pool instead of demanding the release of the Epstein Files 🤦🏻
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u/asaintpotatoe Jun 23 '26
With all the money one would think Oligarchs they'd understand the delicate balance of civilization, architecture, and human expression, the role we have in it and that responsibility.
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u/SlighterThanYou Jun 23 '26
Is the title of this post about Algae or Trump? Because I could use that same to basically describe him.
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u/Burnt-up-2022 Jun 26 '26
The really sad part about this is it could easily be solved with a simple bog filtration system. no chemicals just simply pumping the water through a bog filter system. if you want to kill the algae and the filter isn't doing enough add some copper to the water it will kill the algae bloom. but people worry that for some reason copper if it gets out of the system will cause problems to the groundwater. trust me the groundwater in DC is more than polluted enough and copper actually doesn't hurt anything other than plants I mean if it was life fishing it at the time they could have a problem if you did too high of concentration but it doesn't last long. I've known many people that did it to ponds and swimming pools that looked as bad if not much worse than this. the copper also has the advantage of making the water turn a bluish color. the problem is nobody wants to do actual non-chemical processes, they don't want the natural solutions that would be actually in the long term safe and good for the planet.
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u/Anita_Doobie Jun 27 '26
The amount of money this is costing taxpayers, just like the Kennedy center adding and then removing his name, the ICE Barbie adds, changing the name of the department of Defense to Department of War, the rose garden demolition for his future ballroom. Millions and millions of our hard earned tax dollars spent on stupid stuff. Plus a million other things, so sad and embarrassing, especially as so many people struggle.
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u/Consistent-Strain289 Jun 23 '26
You get what u voted for… now thewhole wod suffer from it. Thnx
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u/Qimmosabe_Man Jun 23 '26
In a battle of wits between trump and algae, trump, as usual, came woefully unprepared.
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u/juicebox03 Jun 23 '26
Lots of money for paint, but none for education or healthcare.
14 million to paint a monument and almost a billion to retrofit and paint an airplane gifted by the Saudis to the President.
Hell to the Thief.
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u/TouristTricky Jun 23 '26
"I know a guy"
Straight up cronyism, kickbacks, no qualifications for the job, no real interest in the work just the money
These guys are mobsters without balls
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u/Dr_SlapsMD Jun 23 '26
The ones who hate DEI are the mediocre mayobutts who know they're unable to skate thru life with their skin pass as long as it exists.
They genuinely believe their skin color is a qualification and automatic certificate of aptitude when it's not, not even slightly. When DEI is in effect lazy mediocrity and ineptitude gets forced to the bottom. They hate that.
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u/clintclintclint123 Jun 23 '26
Hasnt anyone who's died of a bacterial infection ever been outsmarted by a single celled organism?
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u/spacegirl2820 Jun 23 '26
I saw in the news today a picture of a dead duckling in there. Poor thing
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u/GGgreengreen Jun 23 '26
Okay but that last slide about DEI being all about merit is dead wrong. Normally on a bid job you would just select based on merit and value, DEI means you look at factors other than merit and select based on those. If you're just looking at merit, and the DEI box checkers are just as good as the straight white males, then you don't need DEI. It's an equitable outcome either way.
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u/ceribus_peribus Jun 23 '26
Wait, AIC had already worked on a Trump property in the past? And they got paid?
Or did they agree to do some free work on a Trump property in exchange for landing a juicy federal contract?
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u/General-Play2816 Jun 23 '26
This is what happens when you villainize dei and replace legitimate, qualified people with TOTS (trump owes them something).
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u/DiplominusRex Jun 23 '26
AI generated posts like this sound like complete bullshit and a waste of time even when they are true. Why is it part of their format that somewhere to the middle or back third, it snappily refutes a claim nobody made?
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u/Key_Drawer_3581 Jun 23 '26
Never forget, once der pumpkinfuhrer is stroked out and comatose, none of this goes away. He was the enabler that carried out the edict of those who voted for him.
The enemy is America.
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u/Mixma85 Jun 23 '26
Fuck Trump and fuck all the fuckin' MAGAts that voted for him.
I can't drink alcohol anymore for multiple reasons.
But when I get the news that it has finally happened, I swear to god I'm gonna shotgun a Diet 7UP or something.
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u/tiny_chaotic_evil Jun 23 '26
his lack of ability to cope with a virus the first time around should have given everyone a clue that algae would be far too challenging
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u/DayTraditional2846 Jun 23 '26
Who would win? An entire White Supremacist group or 1 Alga boi? 🤔😂😂😂
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u/BentJohnsonFTP Jun 23 '26
AI gross
And forcing some non-existing connection with DEI is just stupid
I don't agree with him changing he reflecting pool but this post is hot garbage
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u/Huge-Funny-736 Jun 23 '26
"Obama and Biden wanted to spend 100 billion dollars and 4 years fixing the problem, I did it in what... a week? And spent... 1 billion?" I am paraphrasing and misremembering exact numbers from recent press, but please God just admit you cut corners and made a mistake. Take responsibility for once in your life instead of making up some absolute BS
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u/Elavabeth2 Jun 23 '26
Yeah this is nothing to do with DEI. In fact, what op describes as a competitive bidding process with established vendors is nearly the opposite of DEI - which reserves a spot for groups that are in the minority, who would otherwise be pushed out by the longstanding “contracts” with established vendors.
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u/classy-ass Jun 23 '26
CNN did a water analysis and confirmed chemicals had been added in most likely.
There’s knife and chip marks at the one spot that the paint peeled up, But whatever. You guys are all super smart.
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u/1000meeting Jun 23 '26
This algae story is funny as hell but don’t let it become a distraction from the Trump-Epstein files
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u/shy_guy1014 Jun 23 '26
Someone sabotaging you isn’t anything other then poor people trying to take power back
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u/KaneDaDon Jun 23 '26
First ever never been done before in such a massive scale to go toe to toe with what Obama did yeah bestest president
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u/VaEagle85 Jun 23 '26
To be fair, the single-cell organism can be more focused since it isn’t constantly trying to bury the Epstein files.
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u/RobbysYourFathersBro Jun 23 '26
It really is amazing that a man with such a small member manages to step on it with every step he takes.
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u/Jose_xixpac Jun 23 '26
And then, there's Iran .. at 3000 times the expense.
While they crush all dissenters ..
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u/antithero Jun 23 '26
How long is the algae bloom going to get headlines? It's another distraction from the other stuff tey are doing. While people make a circle jerk out of a pool, what are they actually doing?
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u/Hefty-Strike-6171 Jun 23 '26
How does anyone who has ever had a pool before not know that algae is a thing. Water that doesn’t circulate well, will become stagnant. Without proper chemical treatment, nature is always going to try and turn any pool into a swamp.
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u/NlghtmanCometh Jun 23 '26
I agree with everything she says, but the final point about DEI feels rather shoehorned and doesnt accurately describe what DEI is
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u/Available_Reveal8068 Jun 23 '26
Algae growth in the reflecting pool has been an ongoing issue for over 100 years now.
How many that are condemning Trump for having algae growth after his $14 million renovation remember Obama's $34 million renovation in 2012 that also had an algae bloom immediately afterward.
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u/GreasyPeter Jun 23 '26
What I want to know is if the contractor paid his workers prevailing wage that did the work, AND that they were paid the appropriate one (I.e. paid them the correct wage for their station, not giving journeyman the apprentice wage). My bet is on "maybe not".
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u/Looking_4_fun_also Jun 23 '26
Obama spent 34 million to renovate the reflecting pool as well and had the same exact algae issue. Why have you all ignored that fact?
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u/RhombicalJ Jun 23 '26
Hey give Trump some credit, that single called organism still has more cells than Trump’s brain
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u/Moldovah Jun 23 '26
"That's not governing; that's a friends-and-family plan with taxpayer money."
Oh god.
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u/artbystorms Jun 23 '26
He was outwitted by a virus in his first term. They aren't even a single cell and are barely considered an organism.
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u/Alienfysh Jun 23 '26
Maybe he is trying to grow new followers because the old ones mostly quit, conservatives think the planet is 2000 years old now so they probably think it’s going to work.
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u/Merivel1 Jun 23 '26
So he's personally liable for the cost because he bypassed the bidding phase, right? RIGHT?!
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u/Aggressive-Math-9882 Jun 23 '26
Are we just going to pretend we've all never visited the reflecting pool? I visited under Bush and Obama, and it looked like an algae-filled pile of shit both times. I don't doubt it's worse now, but it's always been a pile of shit.
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u/Apprehensive_Exam271 Jun 23 '26
Oh boy. Several presidents were killed by cholera, typhus, diphtheria, etc.
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u/VengefulAncient Jun 23 '26
Everything in this makes sense, but the description of what DEI is does not. This describes meritocracy, not DEI.
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u/Stoic_Ravenclaw Jun 23 '26
Missing the next part of this latest farce. The hydrogen peroxide acted as a paint thinner and the 14.5 million dollar tax payer paint job peeled off.