Donald Trump continues looking for a scapegoat to prosecute about his failed ugly botched reflecting pool

Team Algae Trolls Trump’s Botched Paint Project At The Reflecting Pool

First they came for the algae.

Echo opinion published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel by Pat Beall

Then they came for the pink inflatable frog holding the sign that said First They Came for the Algae.

Donald Trump and his minions are grimly contorting themselves into pretzels to find the culprits behind the greening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. 

Science has a name for it: Scenedesmus, a genus of algae fondly referred to by lab scientists as “Skinny Dead Mouse.”

Make that Skinny Dead Mouse with a knife.

Somebody had to slash a 250-, or 300-, or was it a 350-foot gash, in the pool sealant. There’s no way it could possibly be the construction; nothing ever breaks in construction, not when it’s perfect, the best, the hottest.

Grown men walk up to the edge of the pool lining with tears in their eyes, saying, Thank You, Sir, Thank You, and then even more tears, because they touched the water and now they are in jail.
Off with their heads❗ said Trump of reporter Jonathan Karl of ABC News, who dipped his hand into the public water at the public’s pool, and of a bicyclist who was so baffled by the sight of a floating chunk of blue that he stopped and touched it.

I exaggerate. Of course Trump didn’t really call for a guillotine. He demanded decade-long prison terms.

There are pictures! he thundered.

Do you see these pictures right now, Mr. President❓

“At the right time, you will see it,” he told White House reporters. “You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the parks department, call Deptartment of Interior, and I don’t know if their lawyers will allow you to speak to them, because you know you write fake news.”

I, for one, look forward to blurry photos of shiv-wielding mice in masks.😼

There’s a saying in Palm Beach County, and it goes like this: Everything weird comes to Palm
Beach County.

We are a jack-in-the-box of eldritch oddballs, charming felons, generic hucksters and the truly, filthy rich, as well as the other kind.

So don’t be surprised that Trump’s Reflecting Pool Guy — the one whose company did the water purifying — recently got approval for a new, bright blue pool at his Palm Beach estate. 

Don’t be surprised that John Cafaro’s company secured that no-bid contract to fix up the reflecting pool after throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into Trump’s campaigns.

Perhaps be just a wee bit surprised that he once tried to bribe a congressman, and illegally hid a donation to his own daughter’s political campaign. And even I was surprised to learn he wants to build his new splash pool on the beach.

Yes. A swimming pool on the beach. It’s actually on a tiny spit of soil between a retaining wall and the waves, but still: The hot-tub-on-top-of-bathtub-vibe is strong in this one.

It would be easy to dismiss all this as an amuse bouche, a good snort-laugh before refocusing on the war we’re not in, or what SpaceX shares losing 23% of their value in three days bodes for the stock market.

Indeed, the Reflecting Pool is so much more. When Trump pledged to go after his enemies, supporters shrugged. After all, they weren’t James Comey or Hillary Clinton. But now, the enemy is anyone Trump says it is.

That’s how putting your hand in the water becomes a crime against the state. It’s how a cyclist becomes an enemy of the people.

The cyclist was not just arrested. Police were handcuffing him before telling him what he did wrong, he said. 

No one allowed him to make a phone call for hour, and no one read him his constitutional rights.

This pool is not murky at all. It perfectly reflects Trump’s spiteful, spiraling mental deterioration, complete with delusions of dark conspiracies. Because if Trump’s misfiring synapses can order someone arrested for something as small as this, he can order anyone arrested for anything at all — or for nothing at all.

Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer.