Antifa Duck
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The circumstances surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool keep getting dumber.
Unable to be a grown-up and take responsibility for his failure at restoring the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after spending nearly $15 million on it, which went from an original $1.8 million, Donald Trump is now blaming “Radical Left Lunatics” for “Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool.”
Donald Trump awarded a no-bid contract to a campaign donor to restore the reflecting pool. Part of the project included installing a blue lining on the bottom of the 2030-foot pool that holds over 6 million gallons of water. Trump described the lining as “American flag blue” and praised himself for the restoration of the pool, which has dogged administrations for decades. He claimed that he had fixed something. The other presidents could not. Trump said the lining would last for decades.
Less than a week after Donald Trump declared the work completed, the lining started to tear from the bottom of the pool, and algae reappeared, turning the water from blue to green. Ironically enough, the name of the company owned by the Trump campaign donor who restored the pool is Greenwater Solutions. Blue water…we wanted blue water.
Instead of admitting that this is another Trump project turned to shit, like everything else he touches, Trump decided to blame others, and no, not the companies he hired to restore the pool, and not JD Vance. JD will be blamed for the Iran nuclear deal, so he has enough on his plate for the moment.
On Friday night, Trump posted on social media, "We've had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool. Just like three days ago, they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they've also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed."
Trump offered no evidence that any of this was true.
Trump followed up on Saturday by posting that Park Police "have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll," correcting his spelling to "Pool" later, but failed to make “nations” possessive with a lowercase N.
Trump is lying again. There have not been multiple arrests for people vandalizing the reflecting pool.
A MAGAt who comments on my cartoons, multiple times a day at GoComics, claimed that someone had been arrested after being caught dumping live algae into the pool. I don't know what's wrong with people to create lies that can be fact-checked within seconds. But you know, there's more than one MAGAt creating these lies on the internet. They're almost as sick as Donald Trump.
There has been one arrest, but the suspect wasn't damaging the pool.
David Hearn, a former Olympian, was biking by the pool when he stopped to reach into the water to touch the blue lining that was tearing away from the bottom. Park Police immediately descended on him and placed him in handcuffs.
He was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property and is scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court on July 9. He was released after being held for five hours.
Asked to describe his actions, Hearn said, “I reached in there, and I was able to grab the end of that flapping piece, the already peeling piece. It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t remove anything.”
“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn said. “I didn’t destroy, break, or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”
This will probably be thrown out of court faster than the charges against the DC sandwich thrower.
Hearn is a three-time Olympian who competed in the canoe slalom. He won two world championships in whitewater racing before retiring from active competition in 2002.
Trump also accused Jonathan Karl of ABC News, who has reported on the pool’s mounting problems, of “trying to rip the rubber off the surface” of the pool.
Next, they'll arrest the ducks for pooping in the pool. Do they make tiny handcuffs for duck wings? The only duck Donald Trump likes is Scrooge McDuck.
Creative note:
This is how the cartoon started, but the text was getting in the way of the TV screen. This cartoon was a great opportunity to draw Kash Patel, who is a lot of fun to draw.
Drawn in 30 seconds:
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Every time I read about the latest antics of Destructo Don, I think of this well-known quote from The Great Gatsby:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
So, just to be clear, it’s a crime walk on the grass at the reflecting pool, but it’s ok to annihilate the rose garden and the south lawn of the White House.