On Monday night’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart covered the fiasco that is President Donald Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is now infested with algae.
Stewart opened the show with CNN soundbites, which explained that the pool’s high phosphate levels invited a “significant algae bloom” that turned the monument into “a sea of green.”
“That is really fucking green,” Stewart joked. “That shit’s neon green! Did they replace the water with Mountain Dew?”
Through another pair of soundbites, “The Daily Show” revealed that one of the companies working on the renovation won the job through a “no-bid contract,” and was “owned by a trust run by Republican donor John Cafaro.” After revealing a photo of Cafaro to his audience, Stewart joked that he looked like “an extra in ‘Guys and Dolls.’”
“That’s the pool guy? Does Donald Trump do business with anyone normal?” Stewart exclaimed. “Looks like Donnie Brasco got stung by a bee. I’m sorry, to be fair, that’s gotta be an old picture from like, the ’80s when Gomez Addams was all the rage.”
Stewart then cut to Anderson Cooper, who explained that Cafaro is a “Mar-a-Lago neighbor” who, in 2001, “pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe then-congressman James Traficant Jr.”
“The pool guy?” Stewart said. “The pool guy bribed the congressman, and now he gets the pool contract — that tracks. ‘What do I do? Let’s just say I’m in the chlorine management business.’ If you’re like me, when you first heard the reflecting pool had algae, you probably thought to yourself, ‘I hope the president of the United States is personally involved with overseeing this.’”
Watch the entire monologue below.