Transcription
Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes.
The most visually arresting metaphor for the entire Trump era is getting worse by the day. We might call it the president's Green Watergate. Yesterday, we showed you what a leaky, peeling, algae-infested mess the reflecting pool in Washington has become, thanks to Donald Trump's obsessive, costly attempts to turn it into a monument to, let's be honest here, his own brilliance. Just in time for him to hold a MAGA rally that is doubling as a 4th of July celebration for the whole country on the National Mall.
Well, here was the scene today as workers in hip waiters worked feverishly to get the green out, one way or another. This is a crash program at this point, folks, okay? There's lots of frenetic activity. It has included pumping the soupy sage-color fluid through a system of hoses to be discharged just down a storm drain. That, the man who came to Washington promising to drain the swamp is now swamping the drains.
And there are the chunks of bottom paint peeling up to the surface. It turns out this is a waterproof material provided by the company that makes Rhino lining. It's a spray-on liner for the beds of pickup trucks. They applied it to the reflecting pool. Doesn't look like it's working so well. It is just floating in the water now, except for the bits being taken as souvenirs by visitors, and there's actually quite a bit of that happening.
In fact, MSNOW spoke to a few visitors of the pool today. Most were not impressed. "Part of it is sort of an olive green, and then there's this murky blackish color. And then if you look a little closer here, it's more of a lime green. There's people cleaning over there and we saw the water come out. It looks straight like Mountain Dew. For me, it's not the money necessarily. It's the national embarrassment of it. Oh, Vinkie's there. That's my taxpayer souvenir."
Here is a series of aerial photographs of the pool from Reuters. In the two weeks since they started filling the thing with water, it has gone from American flag blue, as Trump wanted, to pea green, to the point where you can actually see the bottom paint peeling and lifting toward the surface. It's not supposed to do that. That stuff has just been on there for a few weeks, less than two weeks.
Of course, in absolutely true Trumpian form, no one in the Mad King's government can tell the king the truth about what we all see with our own eyes. On Wednesday, the Department of Interior, which oversees the National Mall, National Park Service is in the Department of Interior posted, quote, "The reflecting pool water is crystal clear and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of reflecting pool, just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf." They included a photo of the pool taken from the water level where the only color you can really see is the reflection of the sky. Like that's the one shot you can get at this pool where it looks like that.
The department added another photo from a similar angle saying it showed how, and I quote here, and this is a phrase that will haunt me until I die, how the nanobubbler technology and vacuuming have been incredibly effective, making the water crystal clear with the American flag blue coating shining brightly on the bottom of the pool. That, of course, is obviously not true. What is true is if you take photos from those exact angles, you get nothing but a blue sky reflect on the surface. But as you just heard from actual visitors, anyone who walks up to the reflecting pool sees this.
And that infamous nanobubbler technology the Trump administration is touting. Well, there's new reporting on that. It turns out this story of Trump governance isn't just about vanity or incompetence or now up is down gaslighting, right? The pool is clear. It's all working. There is also, of course, because it is Trump, an old-fashioned corruption angle because the government has now handed out not one but two no-bid contracts for work on the reflecting pool.
The first was at least $13 million to paint that blue sealant that is now obviously peeling. But the New York Times, which has been doing great reporting on this, now reports there was another contract awarded in April. Now, this one was for $1.7 million to an Ohio company to install cleaning systems in the reflecting pool, which, at the level of concept, seems like a good idea. Did they do a bang-up job?
That company is called Green Water Services. I am not making that up. The Times reports that Green Water Services, the actual name of the actual company that's helped to turn the water green in the reflecting pool, so it looks like Mountain Dew, is owned by a holding company. That holding company is in turn controlled by the gentleman you see there. His his name is John J. Carafo, and this is him in 2002. Who is John J. Carafo, you ask? I'm glad you asked.
According to the Times, John J. Carafo is a donor to Donald Trump and a neighbor to Mar-a-Lago, the president's private club in Florida. In fact, Greenwater Services lists Carafo's Palm Beach mansion as its address in Florida corporate records, the Times knows. Neither Carafo nor the company responded to the Times, but they report that Carafo's family business was in developing shopping centers, but he branched into other industries, including aerospace.
Now, here's an interesting little detail from his past. In 2001, Carafo pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe Ohio Congressman James Traficant, one of the most flagrantly and notoriously corrupt congressmen of all time. His plea related to arranging nearly $27,000 in repairs on Traficant's houseboat and then buying said houseboat from him for another $26,000. All in all, $53,000. That's all why Traficant was lobbying feds on behalf of, and I'm not making this up either, a laser guidance system that Carafo was selling. He got leniency for testifying against the congressman.
Now, would it shock you to learn that Carafo was also an early Trump supporter? Here you see him at a Trump golf resort in Palm Beach. And back in 2016, when Trump skipped a Republican debate to hold a rally in Iowa, this is very early in the election. He made a big deal of it and he sort of said he was raising money for veterans. Well, he gave his donor and neighbor a shout out. "J.J. He's a man who made a lot of money in Cleveland. Does a good job and a fantastic man. $50,000. J.J., thank you. He made a lot of money." I'm sure his laser guidance systems were great, too. As great as his greenwater nanobubble ozone technology.
The White House and the Interior departments of the president was not involved in the. I'm sure they had fleets of civil servants going through to figure out who the best person was, and it just happened to be that guy who we have pictures of at Mar-a-Lago or Trump golf course. What we do know for sure is this reflecting pool is an obsession for Trump. The reason we're covering it right now, and I will admit I've done more reflecting pool coverage in the last week than the entirety of my previous year, is because it's about all Donald Trump has talked about for the last month. Any time anyone talks to him, it's about the reflecting pool or the ballroom. Occasionally he'll talk about the war he started and lost.
It is entirely that is a guy who we've, in a forthcoming book, he spent a lot of time working the details out on the phone. Especially you consider this is a guy who we've just learned from new reporting in a forthcoming book, is literally supergluing gold accents and challenge coins up on the doors and walls of the White House himself. You think he outsourced these decisions? You think he delegated on those? No. He probably micromanages this just like he's done with the destruction of the East Wing for his ballroom and his UFC birthday bash. And as with those vanity projects, this one has turned into a corrupt, incompetent, expensive, and embarrassing mess he is trying desperately to cover up.