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The now-viral $1.7M reflecting pool renovation has us wondering whether President Donald “drain the swamp” Trump asked Shrek for his landscaping contractor. But reporting from The New York Times shows Trump didn’t actually have to go Far Far Away to find the man for the job. He only had to go down the street from his Palm Beach palace.
Ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is making headlines for all the wrong reasons after the million-dollar “American flag-blue” paint job in early June made the pool absorb more heat, causing “prolific algae growth,” ecology professor Rosalina Stancheva Christova told NPR. When the White House announced it was updating the pool, people started asking questions about the process and whether the whole thing was even necessary — even before the peeling paint and algae had set in.
According to an investigation by The Times, the National Park Service awarded a no-bid contract to Ohio-based Greenwater Services (yes, that’s the actual name), owned by Palm Beach millionaire John. J. Cafaro. Heir to an $800 million fortune, Cafaro is perhaps best known for pleading guilty in 2001 to bribing then-U.S. Representative James Traficant (D-Ohio) to secure millions in contracts for one of his companies, according to reporting by Cleveland 19 News. More recently, campaign finance reports show Cafaro has given more than $300,000 to political committees connected to Trump.
Interior Department spokeswoman Katie Martin told The Times officials chose the company “because they had the expertise, work force and materials needed to complete the job in time.”
The Parks Service bypassed the competitive bidding process by citing an urgency exemption necessitated by the upcoming celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary, according to The Times.
And while netizens have been flooding social media with memes and jokes about the algal bloom since the beginning of June, jokes about Cafaro’s involvement have only just started swamping the internet.
Upon meeting him in person at a Mar-a-Lago party in 2022, reporter Jemima Kelly described him as, “a portly man who looks like the stereotype of a 1930s crime boss, a fat cigar hanging out of his mouth.”
X user Moe Davis dug up what appears to be an old photo of Cafaro sporting a cigar under a wispy mustache, posting it with a caption reminding the internet of his criminal past.
“That guy looks like he’s going to bulldoze the local playground to build a factory in a 1980s movie,” one user quipped.
“Fucking comic book villains getting federal contracts. Classic MAGA,” another wrote.
“Why does Trump surround himself with people who look like villains from the old Dick Tracy comics? Steven Bannon, Roger Stone, Stephen Miller, Steven Cheung … The list keeps getting longer,” another added.
