Pool for Fools
It's getting deep
For some bizarre reason that I don't believe anyone has figured out yet, Donald Trump showed off a graph in the Oval Office, comparing the size of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the size of skyscrapers. Seth Meyers said, “You’re not allowed to compare horizontal to vertical. If that was the case, I-90 crushes the reflecting pool.”
Trump showed off a chart which compared the freshly-painted 2,030-foot-long pool against the 1,451-foot-high Sears Tower in Chicago, New York City's 1,454-foot Empire State Building, and the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center. Upon seeing these comparisons, many people said, “So what?” What does the length of the Reflecting Pool compared to the size of skyscrapers have to do with anything?
You can take this incident to point out how senile Trump is becoming, but it also proves that he is surrounded by enablers because somebody had to print this graph. He's comparing a pool to buildings, horizontal to vertical. Michael Kosta of The Daily Show said, “I’d say you’re comparing apples and oranges, but at least those are fruits.”
Why must we have such a stupid president? Why?
Trump is obsessed with the reflecting pool and is spending millions of dollars of our money so that it does not reflect anymore. He had the bottom of the shallow pool painted bright blue. And now he is bragging about the size of it, as if he had built it himself. If the length of the pool is an accomplishment for Donald Trump, someone has to point it out to me, because I don't see it.
Trump had the fountain at Union Station in Washington DC repaired, so now it works again after many decades of being dry, and now MAGAts aren't just acting as if Donald Trump walks on water, but that he invented it. We should probably look into the contract to repair the fountain.
Before MAGAts gaslight and rewrite history, let's take a moment to note that the Reflecting Pool has been around since 1971, which was during the Richard Nixon administration. Nixon was corrupt, but he never gave a friend a no-bid contract that started at $1.5 million and ballooned to 13 million with no questions asked. I smell kickback.
When I was visiting my friends in Carlsbad, California, last summer, I would often skim their pool as it was a calming and leisurely activity. It never occurred to me that I could have charged them $13 million for it and call it a renovation.
For some reason, Donald Trump was in such a rush to award the no-bid contract to this company that has never had a government contract in the past to restore the pool that they started work before there was an agreement on the price. I'm sure this is something Trump has never done with his personal property that involved his money. Would you hire someone to paint your house without knowing how much they will eventually charge you?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the things that MAGAts claimed would make Donald Trump a great president was that he is a great businessman?
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the company hired to restore the reflecting pool, is not a pool company, and until someone posted one as a joke, had zero Google reviews. At the time of this writing, they have five…. Make that six. I just added one.
Documents reviewed by The New York Times show Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company in Virginia, failed to properly seal gaps in the concrete on the floor of the pool the first two times it tried. The Interior Department declined to tell the Times whether an adequate fix had been found since then.
What other government properties can Trump use to fleece the government with no-bid contracts? Perhaps the pandas at the Washington zoo need a shave. Trump could hire a contractor who'll give him a kickback. Wouldn't we all love to see giant pink hairless pandas?
Creative note: Proofer Laura was a huge help with this one. I originally had the pool labeled in the cartoon, and Laura wrote, “If you take away the words ‘reflecting pool,’ you can make the actual pool bigger than the other things… the original chart just showed the pool without the words ‘reflecting pool.’ If Trump’s supporters are able to make that intellectual leap, I bet your readers can.”
She's smart.
Drawn in 30 seconds:
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Love the great diagram, perfect column headers, Epstein photo, Bigly sippy cup.
To Trump, biggest always=best.
Trump has always been obsessed with the size of things. His inaugural crowd was "yuuuge," way bigger than Obama's, of course.
The ballroom, the reflecting pool, the Arc, etc., have to be the tallest, the longest, the greatest because they belong to him, and he must exceed everyone in everything. I wonder when the Trump Promenade will be finished. Surely it will find itself in this category, too.
This isn’t new! Remember the Sharpie enhanced hurricane forecast? Same process, I betcha.