Donald Trump’s attempt to remake Washington, DC in his image — or at least Mar-a-Lago’s — has hit a few notable snags recently. A federal judge ordered Trump’s name stripped from the Kennedy Center (though its removal was less cathartic than anticipated). There are major obstacles to the president’s plan for a grandiose “triumphal arch.” But what’s really getting Trump’s goat these days is the growing fiasco that is his Reflecting Pool renovation. Ahead of America’s 250th birthday, Trump vowed to give the iconic landmark’s basin a paint job to make the water therein appear “American flag blue,” as well as reseal cracks and clear out the algae that tends to accumulate in the summer. But it turns out the Reflecting Pool is a fickle and unforgiving body of water, which is why the Obama administration encountered problems during a somewhat similar renovation.

It probably didn’t help that the Interior Department doled out a pair of no-bid contracts for the job, including one to a Trump-connected firm, Greenwater Services (perhaps the name should have been a tipoff?) whose convicted-felon CEO strongly resembles the WWE manager Paul Bearer. Soon, the algae had returned, and pieces of blue paint began to peel off the basin and bob in the water. A fleet of National Park Service workers was tasked with addressing these complications as confused tourists looked on and the president fumed on social media.

To gain some clarity on what has gone wrong, I turned to Steve Goodale, known online by the moniker “Swimming Pool Steve.” Goodale, a suddenly in-demand expert based in Ontario, runs a YouTube channel dedicated to the maintenance of swimming pools and aquatic systems, and has recorded several popular videos analyzing the Reflecting Pool’s woes. After we spoke on Friday, the problems kept coming. Police arrested several people, including a former Olympian, for interfering with the site in what appeared to be inconsequential fashion. Trump, never missing an opportunity to pass the buck, posted on social media that the pool would have to be drained, and appeared to blame vandalism for the multitude of visible problems on the Mall.

The algae is back with a vengeance at the Reflecting Pool. I’ve seen you express skepticism about the government’s official explanation for why this is happening. Can you elaborate?There was a statement about this algae bloom being caused by existing algae and plant matter within the pipes, which got dumped into the basin as it was filled. And my only skepticism there was — I’m a small-time contractor by comparison, but I know if I take your swimming pool or any aquatic structure offline for a month in the summertime, the lines are going to be disgusting. You need to flush them out. You can’t........

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