So what has been happening to the Lincoln Pool?

What is clear is that repairs to fix the peeling paint liner are nowhere close to being completed. Trump may have tried to hide the disaster by erecting a fence around the pool to keep out observers but unfortunately for him, it turns out that there is a live cam feed from a camera atop the Washington Monument that is pointed directly at the pool so that anyone can see the status of the pool at any time. As you can see for yourself, as of today it is still empty of water and looks like a mess, with a gash in the paint lining running right down the middle for the length of the pool.

Meanwhile the administration is still pathetically clinging to the fiction that vandals are behind the problems.

Work to correct the cracking and flaking liner at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is underway, weeks after the government dropped charges against people accused of vandalizing the pool, citing instead the “botched” renovation efforts.
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Workers could be seen power washing the pool’s basin and using caulk applicators on the perimeter expansion joint. Some workers ripped up large sheets of damaged liner, and used leaf blowers and brooms to sweep up smaller pieces of liner debris.

Asked about the work, the Interior Department referred The Washington Post to new signage posted at the east end of the pool. Those signs said that the National Park Service and contractors are “repairing areas damaged by vandals and completing a historic effort to clean, fix, and beautify the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Memorial Pool.”

Trump made new promises.

President Trump posted an update Friday on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, quoting an Interior Department official as saying it was “Coming out great!” and will be open in a few weeks. 
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Trump’s latest post blamed previous administrations, saying, “After years of neglect by previous administrations, more than half of the 58 water supply ports were so clogged that they were deemed nonfunctioning. This work is ongoing. We waited until after July 4th to do. Coming out great!”

The contractor who botched the job is a crony of Trump’s who was given a no-bid contract. So when he bungled it, he was of course given the task of fixing it, because Trump rewards loyalty over competence. You can be sure that as the process drags on, the contractor will be coming back for more and more funds.

I think the problem lies with the basic idea of painting the pool base. If it turns out that that is not possible, we will have the spectacle of ‘repairs’ continuing indefinitely, with Trump claiming that resourceful vandals are enabled to secretly and successfully somehow strike again and again. Any reasonable person would cut their losses and abandon the whole thing and take the pool base back to its original concrete base. But this is a Trump’s vanity project we are talking about. He will demand that the effort continue while raging against vandals whenever each new effort fails.

I think the “few weeks” are going to be like the war with Iran, never-ending.

I suspect that if the pool repainting had been a success, Trump would have renamed the pool the Trump Reflecting Pool. Now that the whole thing is a mess, he may still get his wish, sort of, since the pool could acquire the nickname ‘Trump’s Folly’.