David A. Fahrenthold

I picked the guy who'd done a great job at my golf club in Northern Virginia.

And I called him and I said, can you take care of it?

He said, great, you know, I can handle it.

A pool's a pool.

A pool's a pool, and we'll do it like a pool.

And that was what President Trump said several times in public.

It turns out that's not true.

As far as I can tell, this company advertises no experience doing swimming pools.

There are experiences in things like coating highway culverts, fuel tanks, waterproofing things, but not swimming pools.

And I also don't think they've ever worked for the Trump organization.

And now Trump himself has said as much.

He said, I don't know this company, and they never worked for me, raising again the question of how they got this job.

It's odd that this company, which doesn't have any advertising experience doing even small swimming pools, would be entrusted by the government without any sort of competitive bidding process, but that is what happened.

Well, we can see that work in front of us.

So one of the things they're doing is spreading a waterproofing compound on the 8-inch concrete slabs.

They're also filling in the gaps or trying to fill in the gaps between the concrete slabs.

So that's supposed to address the leaks?

The leaks.

Okay.

To understand, though, why that was such a risk, I think you need to know a little bit more about why the pool has been troublesome and why it needs repair.