Bob the Builder

All the President's Toys

Public speculation about the state of the President’s physical and mental health erupts in regular bursts related to hand-bruises, weird sagging eye, weird rashes, cankles, public naps and unhinged rambles. But we pay less attention to his emotional health, even though he’s a lonely old man with millions of distant admirers and no real friends. His devoted wife is AWOL. When not in Florida, he lives alone in the White House residence except for the nightly apparition of Natalie Harp delivering a menu of obscene and racist social media memes, and the preternaturally discreet White House staff providing snacks and cleaning up after him. According to Swan and Haberman’s new book, the residence is an Augean stables of snack trash, with the old man tossing out White House silver along with the chip bags and empty ice cream containers.

The only physical contact the old man has with anyone beyond his official hand shaking duties is likely a glam room attendant straightening the red tie and wielding the spray tan, hair spray, suit-steamer, lint-brush to make him TV-ready.

Of all the memes circulated about the American President, the toddler in diapers or giant baby playing with toy bombers in the Iranian LEGO videos probably comes closest to the spectacle inside the gilded bunker. But Trump thinks of himself as a Builder not a warrior. He has spent his life trying to live up to the unmet expectations of Fred Trump, a man who knew foundations and concrete and actually had put hammer to nail. Donald grew up at that man’s side, costumed in hard hat but with hands destined to remain forever soft. He learned the profane patois of New York and New Jersey contractors but farmed out the rest of it.

Trump’s second term is remarkable for more aberrances than we can track. But chief among them are the mysterious, unnecessary projects to demolish East Wing, re-coat the Reflecting Pool, affix gold decorations to the Oval Office with super glue and until stopped, tear down and re-do the Kennedy Center. An arc-de-Trump waits on the drawing board.

The only reasonable explanation for this orgy of wasteful brick and mortar is that the handlers need toys and games to keep the old man from disrupting the serious business of making war, destroying the sciences, defunding humanitarians, filling concentration camps, and wrecking alliances - matters attended to with great devotion by Vought, Miller, Kegseth, Kennedy and Wiles - and nameless administration elves whose allegiances are most definitely not to the American people..

One sure sign that the Bob the Builder projects exist to placate and distract the Old Man is the near total lack of transparency around the contracting processes. Normally, federal agencies like the National Park Service would oversee the reflecting pool, and the National Capital Planning Commission would sign off on the East Wing project. Contracts normally overseen by the federal General Services Administration (GSA) were presented directly by the Executive Residence of the White House. There is no known evidence of GSA oversight.

These baffling, expensive boondoggles seem to serve two purposes. They keep the old man occupied and open the spigot on taxpayer funds for the claque in New York, Jersey and Florida who have either done business with the old man over the years or ponied up for a Mar a Lago membership.

The peeling algae-choked disaster of the $14 million Reflecting Pool improvement made news this weekend. The White House gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to a company, Atlantic Industrial Coating. Trump has said he selected—or recommended—Atlantic because it had previously worked on one of his golf club pools, probably Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. Trump called Atlantic’s owner “a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools.”

Atlantic then brought on a subcontractor from Oklahoma, Mid-America Industrial Coatings whose truck was seen at the pool. Reporter Gabe Sanchez tweeted in May that he called Atlantic to inquire about the subcontract. The owner “became evasive and shut down the conversation,” Sanchez reported, stating “That’s none of your business.” And it wouldn’t be the Epstein class-infested administration if a former chief operating officer of the Mid-America didn’t also have multiple felony convictions for child sex abuse.

There there’s the man hired to keep the reflecting pool clear and free of algae: John J. Cafaro, a Taftian cigar chomping dandy with a Hitler haircut and ‘stache, another in a long line of individuals and events that suggest America passed through a wormhole into a Marvel Comic alternative universe around 2016.

Cafaro owns the aptly named Green Water Solutions. He bagged the no-bid $1.6 million contract despite - or because of? - a record of pleading guilty to bribing public officials. There is now more algae on the pool than there was before the project.

The reflecting pool debacle is only the most recent Bob the Builder project. The totally unnecessary East Wing “ballroom” has been off the news cycle lately, buried by reports of war and flu outbreaks at Hegseth’s vaccine-free military installations. Like the others, there is no transparency on the contracts other than the name of the architect in charge and rumors about a large federal contractor, Clark Construction, since December 2025.

The cost of the heap of rubble and eternal Big Dig has careened so far over budget that taxpayers are now on the hook for at least half of the projected $600 million cost. Surprised? Cost overruns, padded contracts and wink-wink handshake deals are exactly how the reality show nepo-baby businessman learned the business.

Okay kids, that’s enough of a lesson for today. Grab your juice boxes and sing along with me:

Bob the Builder!

Can we fix it?

Yes we can!

Bob the Builder!