Salty conservative can’t stop counting Trump’s 'swampy' metaphors

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a reflecting pool image at the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, D.C., June 3, 2026. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque

A conservative commentator says President Donald Trump’s algae-green renovations of the Reflecting Pool offer a slew of metaphors to define his entire presidency.

“The reflecting pool is a microcosm of nearly everything that vexes people about the second Trump term,” wrote The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg on Wednesday. “We can start with the decision to ignore the usual rules and procedures to give a no-bid job to a contractor for the repair and paintwork. Trump said it would cost $1.8 million. The costs have grown nearly tenfold. To deal with the insurrectionist algae, he gave another no-bid job to a Mar-a-Lago crony, campaign donor, and convicted felon who looks like a villain from the old Dick Tracy comic strip.”

Goldberg added that “The man who vowed to ‘drain the swamp’ of D.C.’s corrupt cronyism used figurative swampy means to deliver literal swampy ends.”

Yet in addition to symbolically manifesting Trump’s failure to drain the swamp as he promised to do, Goldberg said that the “pool fiasco” also demonstrates Trump’s inability to deliver on what he promises.

“A project Trump touted as proof of his genius and expertise becomes proof of unpatriotic enemies undermining him when it flounders,” Goldberg wrote. “Without any evidence, Trump claimed that the only reason the reflecting pool’s paint is peeling and algae blooming is because anti-American ‘vandals’ sabotaged it with a ‘300-foot long gash.’”

Additionally, Goldberg noted that Trump’s baseless excuse for the Reflecting Pool’s problems — namely, that vandals sabotaged his renovations (a charge which ignores internal documents proving that the administration had a number of logistical issues during the construction project) — are as absurd as so many other things he has said during his administration.

“How vandals evaded National Park Police, security cameras, and his own National Guard deployment remains unknown,” Goldberg said. “Never mind how they put a 300-foot gash in a paint job Trump described as, ‘So very strong. You couldn't, if you had a knife—I don't want to give anybody ideas—if you had a knife, you can't even cut it. So strong, so powerful.’”

Goldberg also pointed to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s absurd attempt to defend Trump’s renovations.

“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people,” Hegseth said. “And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged … there’s only one man, over the course of both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”

Goldberg is not the only right-wing commentator to blast Trump’s Reflecting Pool controversy as emblematic of his presidency. Political commentator David Rothkopf said something similar earlier this month.

“It’s turned into a tourist attraction in downtown D.C. for people to hate on Trump, right? They come down, and they reflect on what a bad president they’ve got,” Rothkopf told The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles. “And then he’s like, ‘Holy mackerel, this is a mess. What are we going to do?’”

He compared this issue to other Trump failed renovations.

“Who defaced the Oval Office?” Rothkopf said. “Who destroyed the East Wing? Who put a giant claw on the South Lawn of the White House? Who is building a gilded ballroom for billionaires to dance in while Americans starve? Who is building an arch to honor himself? Who’s covering all the horse statues in Washington in gold leaf?”

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