David A. Fahrenthold

The I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King.

Some huge protests against the Million Man March in the 1990s.

Gatherings of the left and the right.

President Trump counted as the scene of one of his great events after his election in 2016.

So just think about how many Americans, we're seeing them around us today, have come here, stood at this place, looked out at this reflecting pool and thought, you know, I'm standing in the place where history happened.

No, we're standing in front of a construction site.

The reflecting pool is empty of water.

Instead, it has a semi-truck, lots of trailers, generators, a lot of construction equipment.

There's sandbags.

Porta-potties.

Porta-potty, barrels of supplies.

We're looking at a very large construction site here.

Well, the project we're seeing in front of us is another example of the Trump administration bypassing the usual competitive bidding process and just handing an important contract directly to one company.

OK.

And what is that company?

The company is called Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

It's a small company based in a place called New Canton, Virginia.

Oddly, President Trump told the story several times of how this company was hired.

He said, I realized that it was actually just a giant swimming pool.

I talked to the swimming pool guys from my golf clubs.