Bulwark Takes - Trump's Reflecting Pool Guy Looks like a Cartoon Mobster

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

JVL and Sonny Bunch take on the bizarre saga of Washington’s algae-filled Reflecting Pool and John Cafaro the Trump-connected donor who landed the contract to fix it. Plus, an unexpected detour into wrestling history, Paul Bearer, and why this whole scandal feels more like a cartoon than real life.Looking for a Father's Day gift? Consider a membership to The Bulwark's website. Learn more at https://www.thebulwark.com/subscribe

When thirst strikes and your energy begins to fade, one hero rises above the rest. Introducing the superpower smoothie from Zhu Booster. A bright sun-charged burst of mangoes, bananas, and blue spirulina. An out-of-this-world smoothie. Just in time for the new Supergirl movie. Discover your power and channel your inner superhero. Fly into your local Zhu Booster and experience it for yourself today. And see Supergirl, only in theaters June 26th.

Hello, everyone. Big breaking news. We have found the man behind the Washington, D.C. reflecting pool algae disaster. His name is J.J. John Kaffaro. You're not going to believe this, but he's a longtime friend of Donald Trump's a Mar-a-Lago appointment. I'm JBL here with my friend and colleague from the bulwark, Sunny Bunch. Sunny, take the wheel. I just love this guy's story because if you look at him, I mean, you look at him and you think, well, this guy can't possibly be up to any good. And you'd be right. You can judge the book directly by his cover. Does he remind you of anyone? Well, I mentioned to my lovely wife that I was going to be doing a podcast on this. And I mentioned his name and she didn't know. And I was like, you know, the guy who looks like Paul Bearer. And she immediately, immediately recognized who I was talking about. A dead ringer for the late great Paul Bearer of WWE fame, who we will talk about at some length later in the show. We'll get to him. We'll get to Paul Bearer. But so John, John Caparro is, I just, again, I'm just going to read the greatest hits here, right? In 2001, he pleads guilty to a conspiracy to bribe representative James Trafficant.

Remember James Trafficant? With the hair. Speaking of guys with great hair who were incredibly. corrupt, James Traffkin. We got a James Traffkin conviction here. In 2002, prosecutors said that he, let's see, he was trying to win approval from the FAA for a laser guidance technology that his company had developed. In addition, Kaffaro secretly gave Mr. Traffickant thousands of dollars that was used to pay off a loan and to repair the congressman's boat. So good, good for him. He was fined $150,000 for that and then placed on probation.

He also, that's, you know, there's more, there's more here. He was, he admitted to concealing a $10,000 donation to his daughter's 2004 campaign for Congress. What's his daughter's name, Sonny? You're talking about Capri, Caparro. Hey, whofa! That's a lot of Gabba Gou. I was told I'm not allowed to make any jokes of this nature, but you as a New York residents are, what's I'm saying?

Oh, hey, it's a cabatababing. He's a good guy. The reason he is in the news right now is because I don't know if anybody has noticed, but the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C. is a mess. It was a mess. And the White House was like the most important thing we need to do right now. Yes, we've got the wars and yes, we got everything else. But we've got to fix this reflecting pool.

We've got to get it done. It's an emergency. And it's such an emergency. It had to be done so quickly before the 250th anniversary of America celebrations that they allowed this to go through a no-bid contract. not supposed to do this unless it's a real, it's a real emergency, but this was. How do they find Mr. Kaffaro's firm, Sonny? I'm glad that you asked that, because Mr. Kaffaro, as you mentioned, is a longtime friend

and ally of one president, Donald J. Trump. He, amongst, this was my favorite little tidbit from his long dealings with the president. Do you remember the debate that Donald Trump boycotted? back in 2016. He wasn't getting his proper respect. So he decided to boycott one of the debates. And he put on a televised fundraiser for veterans, of course, for the veterans. He did it for the veterans.

So we can't possibly make fun of this. He couldn't possibly be corrupt. Except one of the biggest donors, one of the biggest donations given during this event, of one $50,000 check from a John J. Kaffaro. J.J. Kaffaro from Florida and from Cleveland. He's a man who made a lot of money in Cleveland. Cleveland does a good job and a fantastic man. Mr. Trump said from the stage, JJ, thank you. This isn't a New York Times story about it. Mr. Kaffaro did not just do this. He did not see this

on television and just do it out of the goodness of his heart, by the way. You know why he was driven to do this one? Ivanka Trump asked him to. Call them up. Maybe he was just watching the TV. He's just watching the TV and it is a great patriot. Look, like again, the ties here are very deep, right? The campaign finance records, again, I'm reading from the New York Times here, the campaign finance records indicate that Mr. Kaffaro has given more than $300,000 to political committees connected to Mr. Trump. When the president's Mar-a-Lago Club hosted the lavish international Red Cross ball in 2017, Mr. Kaffaro's wife, Janet, Janet Kaffaro, I don't know if that's actually the mother of

Capri Kaffaro, but also in the Kaffaro family, was the events chairwoman. So, like, this is, once again, this is just a situation where a guy who has gotten in with Trump has gotten, given tons and tons of money, all of a sudden he's getting no bid contracts on an emergency basis to do a shitty job. I can't, I can't, I'm shocked, shocked that there's corruption here in this establishment. The story here is a very simple one. Here is a guy who lives near Marilago, who has deep ties to the, the president in terms of, you know, just hanging out and donating money and whatever. And his company, his company gets a call from the National Park Service. It is mind-blowing to me. Just the staggering corruption here of the form of government we have right now is just

wonderful. Because it's what I like to call, we got a guy. We got a guy government. They look at this situation. It's like, you know, you go out in your backyard, your pool's got a leak and you say to your friend, oh man, how am I going to get this fix? And your friend says, I got a guy. I got a guy. I got a cool guy. He's going to come out. He's going to fix your pool for it. I got a guy. I got a guy. John Jay Kaffaro is the got a guy in this situation. So we got a guy.

We got a guy. He's going to come out here and he's going to do it and he's going to do a great job. Spoiler alert, he did a terrible job. He did a terrible job. He gets this no bid contract. It does a terrible job. So it's worse than this. How does the National Park Service find, Mr. Kaffaro. Well, here I'm reading from the New York Times. The Times previously reported that David Schutzenhofer, the general manager of Mr. Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, advised the Park Service on the project and was in contact with Greenwater in January. So the National Park Service is being advised by the guy who runs the Bedminster Golf Club, and he is in contact with Mr. Trump's buddy, Mr. Kaffaro, and he's the one who says, hey, hey, yo, I got a guy.

Use this guy. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. I'll take care you. He'll give you a nice price. Now, so many questions. First of which is, did the park service pay Mr. Kaffaro in cash so that he didn't have to report this as taxable income? I hear that's a thing that some service vendors in the New York, New Jersey area do from time to time. Well, you would live in that. You live in this area. JVO. You are the one who gets the nice price. Would you say that this is a common thing that has that has occurred? I would say it is not uncommon for vendors who I employ to fix my reflecting pools to tell me that there are two prices for something. There is a cash price because then they don't report the income and then there is a real price. It's very hard to say. It's very hard to say.

So yeah, so we spent the, I'm trying to pull the number here. I think it was 13. million on this, but then there was also another no-bid contract on the reflecting pool for 14.7 million that went to a Virginia firm, Atlantic industrial coatings, also no-bid, and they are the people who painted it blue. The blue stuff already coming off, as our cracked team proved on the board YouTube channel and live stream yesterday. Yeah, that's going. even worse. No, I believe, so I believe Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio, which is the company that traces back to John Jake Faro, was given a $1.7 million contract for this. You know, that's, that's chump change. Chumped at 1.7 million. That's nothing. That's for the algae and the

nanobble technology. One well-timed $50,000 contract, I'm sorry, donation, donation for the troops. We'll get you, we'll get you a pretty good deal in the long run. That, that works. out. Again, this whole thing is ridiculous, but it doesn't, it, you can't understand it unless you're actually looking at pictures of the guy, because he is a cartoon villain. Like, he looks like a figure out of the vast reaches of like pulp fiction. He is like a Dick Tracy character. He is a Batman villain. We, we have come up with a number of different, uh, little comparison points for him. Sunny, you're not supposed to judge books by their covers. But would you, if this guy was a contractor who showed up to your house to install a nanobble technology filtration system for your reflecting pond, would you say, yeah, you know what? He seems like he's on the level. That guy looks, he looks okay.

I would not think twice. I'd just bring him right in. I'd assume that this was all perfectly well done and, you know, not ask a second question about it. It's an amazing story. But all right, before we talk about that, just be real here for a second. Father's Day is coming up. You don't have a gift. You got to get something for Dad. It's Sunday. Father's Day is this Sunday.

There's a lot of dads out there who, just like you, if you're listening to this probably, they're just kind of done. They're done with the noise. They're done with the outrage. They're done with the corporate watered-down media. And if that sounds like your dad, well, you're in luck. The bulwark.com was made for people just. like that. People who don't want corporate-owned media, people who just want a commitment to the

truth and honesty about the stakes of what's going on. And that's what we do with the bulwark. Bullwork membership gets you access to everything from our newsletters to our reporting to the members-only shows. It's a great Father's Day gift. And that sounds right for you. It sounds right for you. It sounds right for your dad. Head over to the bulwark.com slash subscribe. That's the bulwark.com slash subscribe. I'm a little concerned that our listeners are going to see Mr. Kaffaro and look at the shoddy work that his company did and conclude that his disreputableness should be attributed to the late great Paul Bearer.

And so I thought we could make this a teaching moment to teach our viewers about the great Mr. Bearer. Would that be okay with you, son? Go for it. John Kaffarro's doppelganger, the late Paul Bearer, was a wrestling manager, and his real name was William Alvin Moody, and he got into Rasselin as a manager in the 70s, and he managed as Percival Percy Pringle III. Now, that character is like the Dread Pirate Roberts, and many people have played Percy Pringle. Percival Pringle the third in different promotions over the years. He was just one of them. He was

not the original nor the real Percy Pringle. And while he was doing this, he managed in that capacity a bunch of guys who would go on to become really big famous wrestlers, including a gentleman named Stunning Steve Austin and a guy named Mark Callaway, who would go on to become the undertaker. Now, what's very interesting about Mr. Moody is that he was doing wrestling and he liked it, but then he had a kid. And when he had a kid, he thought, I got to, I got to do something a little more stable than this. He's a family man. And so he dropped out of wrestling, went back to college, and he got a degree in mortuary science and got a certification to work as both an embalmer and a mortician to be an actual undertaker. Then, I think it was Rick Rood, says to Vince McMahon one day,

Hey, you know, I got this guy. You might want to look into hire him. He's pretty good. You know, we could use another Bobby Heenan time. I got a guy. I got a guy. That's it. And he brings in William Moody. And, you know, Vince McMahon, a very literal-minded gentleman, says,

Oh, you're an undertaker. Well, we're going to call you Paul Bearer. Did it? Did it? Paul Bearer. And this becomes his new gimmick. And Paul Bearer does this. I'm a Kamala's funeral. He was notable.

His catchphrase was, The power of the urn. And he'd hold the urn up and the urn would call out to the undertaker. Amazing, amazing mic work. One of the true legends of the genre. He is just a fantastic presence on the scene.

I remember him and it was him and Jimmy, Jimmy the mouth from the South and Bobby the Brain Heenan. like those were the three great, you know, managers of that time period. Again, I agree with you, J.B.L. We do not want to besmirch his good name by associating him

with an individual like one John J. Kaffaro. I, again, this is very funny. It's also just incredibly outrageous. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is, the petty corruptions. The petty corruptions

and the, um, implication that we're of the insane ones for actually caring about this are, I think, what drive all of us the craziest about the Trump administration. Because if this sort of thing was happening under Barack Obama, could you imagine he just called one of his buddies from Chicago to come out and fix the thing and it was full of algae two days later and they spent tens of millions of dollars on this? Can you imagine? I, it's insane. Fox News would still be running segments on that in 2026. Trump administration will just be like, it's fine. It's going to fix it. I hate it. I hate it so much.

Yeah, you complain about the algae, and it's like talking about the Hatch Act. People just look at you like you're an insane person. And they don't remember that we used to be a country. We would not even care about it if it wasn't for the fact that the Trump administration itself had been like pulling out charts showing how tall the reflecting pool is compared to skyscrapers and saying we're going to fix it. You know, Barack Obama left this place filthy and messy, and we're going to clean it up, and it's going to look so great.

And then, of course, two days later, they can't pour enough hydrogen peroxide in it because that's the thing they're doing. The whole thing is the whole thing is just outrageous. And it drives me, it drives me bonkers. It makes me, it makes me crazy. It makes me a little bit crazy. Well, I got to say one thing, Sonny, and that's this. I actually feel a little bit better knowing that there is mafia-style graft and corruption going on here. And it's not pure incompetence.

because before we found out about Mr. Kaffarro's involvement in this, I thought it was just the case that like nobody doing this had any idea what the F they were doing. And they were just like, what kind of paint do we have to put on the bottom of the thing? I don't know.

Just get latex-based house paint. That'll probably work. You know, nobody thought about like what sort of seal it is or is that cement or limestone on the bottom of? Knowing that the whole thing is basically like fraud actually makes it a little more palatable to me. Because that means they did know,

they're just a bunch of guys cut in corners to do the cheapest possible Potemkin job and keep enough money. And you know what? That's as American as apply. JBL, thank you for sitting down. And really, I like, we're focused on John Gaffar here, but I'm glad we could get a little bit of talk in on one,

Paul Bear, who is a great American, William Moody. Let's put some respect on his name. You're in a weird place when the wrestling guy is the one who is more normal and morally upstanding than the political guy. Normally the wrestlers who are the carnies are always the ones who are disreputable. Not here. In a just world, we'd all think of Big Boy from the Dick Tracy movie, the Al Pacino character, and not Paul Bearer. But, you know, that's that just is not where we are. JBL, thanks for sitting down and talking about John Jake Farrow.

And every day, every day it's something else. It's amazing.