A major algae bloom and peeling paint are already plaguing President Donald Trump’s new Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool just days after its completion, with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl writing via X on Thursday, “The algae seems to be winning.”

According to The Washington Post, the algae bloom is the largest “at any recorded point in the month of June for at least five years.” It comes as the memorial just underwent a $14 million renovation, with Trump complaining in June that its water was “filthy dirty.”

Alongside pictures of floating pieces of paint and National Park Service employees on clean-up duty, Karl wrote of their efforts, “So far, the algae seems to be winning. As for the American flag blue paint, it’s starting to peel from the bottom of the pool — a short-lived $14 million paint job.”

Also on Thursday, MS NOW’s John Heilemann chimed in, describing a recent visit to the memorial.

“I took my malaria pills before I went down there,” he told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace and Cornell Belcher of the pool’s swampy nature. “And went down like, you know, mosquito-netted. Fairly soon, there are gonna be, like, alligators and crocodiles and like, you know, hippopotamuses are gonna be breeding because that swamp situation is so bad.”

He continued:

And it’s such a great metaphor for the whole Trump administration because it’s like, having this crazy idée fixe where we’re gonna do this thing — number one. Number two — doing it really just because, “I got a pool guy! I wanna write him a contract for a few million dollars.” Dismissing any expert who said, you know, “The blue is gonna absorb more heat and there’s gonna be an environmental problem that’s gonna lead to this algae bloom.” He was told that. People were like, you know, “This is gonna be a problem.” He didn’t listen to them.

Watch the full clip above via MS NOW.

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