Of all the scandals that have beset the nation during the years of the Trump regime, few have so neatly represented the would-be dictator as his despoliation of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The overgrowth of green slime caused by Donald Trump's idiotic attempt to refurbish the pool evokes the disgust most Americans now feel at the mention of his name.

This episode includes all the varieties of Trumpian scandal we now anticipate in regular rotation. Scheduled for completion by the Fourth of July's 250th anniversary, it is a shambles and yet another Trump-sponsored national disaster.

From its inception, this was a typical instance of corruption, which saw the White House deliver a no-bid contract to a firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which just happened to have done similar work on swimming pools at the Trump Organization's Virginia golf club.