CNN’s Phil Mattingly couldn’t hold back his frustration when reading a post by the Interior Department about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s “crystal clear water” — as pea-green algae swamps the pool and efforts to stop it have caused the “American flag blue” coating to peel away.

After a report on President Donald Trump’s failed $14 million project by correspondent Tom Foreman, Mattingly, who sat in for Dana Bash on Friday’s Inside Politics, said, “I genuinely don’t care about this,” before venting his frustrations.

“There are, like, a lot of things going on in the world that I think require attention — this isn’t high on my list,” Mattingly continued. “But there was a tweet from the Interior Department that Tom alluded to, where they said, ‘The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom… just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”

“Jonah’s head just dropped dramatically and it wasn’t theatrical,” Mattingly said of panelist Jonah Goldberg. “He meant like — first — like, not crystal clear — Like, stop! Like, you guys — It’s — I’m — Come on!” Mattingly exclaimed, as he stumbled over his words.

“Yeah. It’s a ‘don’t believe your lying eyes moment,’ right?” said panelist Alex Gangitano. “Like, all these reporters lining the reflecting pool, showing us what there is. I saw a reporter put in a camera that can go underwater to show like, no, this isn’t just from above. We’re seeing exactly — what you’re seeing on TV is real. And I mean, this was a multimillion dollar project that the president wanted done by the Fourth of July. And now, we’re taking up time talking about this. And people are taking up time, having to report on it and to clean it up.”

Gangitano added, “It feels like another thing that the president was very excited to do in D.C. and get people’s praise for, and here we are with this.”

“It seems like a metaphor in some ways for the Trump presidency — I think that’s what we’re all picking up here,” said Tia Mitchell. “You know, over promised, not executed with experts in science, and the best of the best. There were appearances of cronyism. And then the end result, it appears that we’re worse off than where we started.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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