WASHINGTON ― Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) is calling on President Donald Trump to personally pay back taxpayers for the millions he spent revamping the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is now a cesspool of algae and chunks of blue sealant.

“For weeks, Americans have watched a national embarrassment unfold on the National Mall,” Hickenlooper says in a new letter to Trump, first obtained by HuffPost.

“Under the guise of an ‘emergency,’ your Administration bypassed competitive bidding processes to rush a renovation of the iconic Reflecting Pool,” says the senator. “Today, the Reflecting Pool is a fluorescent green swamp of algae, and the expensive blue sealant is already peeling off the bottom in sheets.”

“The bill for this fiasco should only belong to you, Mr. President,” he adds.

Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement that Trump’s efforts to “beautify our nation’s capital are supported by Americans across the country and should be praised by both Republicans and Democrats.”

Here’s a copy of Hickenlooper’s letter:

The mess at the pool was entirely avoidable: Trump rushed to paint it “American flag blue” in time for a July 4th photo-op, and in the process, he bypassed laws and gave out no-bid contracts. The result is a combination of shoddy work, a missed deadline and more than $16 million in taxpayer money gone.

The president has tried to blame the disaster on mysterious vandals, baselessly suggesting his political opponents came in the dead of night with knives to shred the blue sealant and dump algae into the water.

“We have 100, and we have a, I think, 290, 300-foot slit right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind,” Trump said Monday to reporters at the White House. “We had people lifting up the basic, some of the bays. It’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and re-fix it.”

The White House spokesperson leaned into this nonsensical argument, too.

“It is shameful that elected Democrats would lie to the American public about the deranged vandalism that has taken place at the Reflecting Pool,” Rogers told HuffPost. “President Trump generously spearheaded the restoration of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and it is now reflecting beautifully despite the vandals’ attempt to destroy it.”

In his letter, Hickenlooper scoffed at the president’s claims.

“This was not a result of vandalism,” said the senator, “but your administration’s incompetence.”

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