President Donald Trump demanded five months ago that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool be "fixed," and now one Republican commentator says it might be time to simply "rip" it up.

Appearing on CNN's morning panel Friday, David Avella, chairman of GOPAC — a Republican state and local political training organization and super PAC — suggested it might make sense to eliminate the century-old Reflecting Pool altogether.

The project began with a claim that repairs would cost only $1.5 million to $2 million. That figure has since ballooned to $16 million, alongside a new contract with another company that believes it can fix the algae problem for $2.7 million. That company's CEO told NBC Washington it intends to solve the algae issue with chemicals — an approach that had not been an option in the past because wildlife such as ducks and other birds in the former marshland use the pool.

The National Park Service and D.C. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro both labeled the work on the pool "botched" after the new "American Flag Blue" liner began to peel and float. How the chemical treatment interacts with the birds and other wildlife that regularly use the pool remains an open question as the new contract moves forward.

"Famously, the president is somebody, as you just had in your last segment, [who] loves to build things, loves to put his name on things," NOTUS national political reporter Elena Schneider explained on CNN.

"And I'm sure that he is not pleased about the fact that this is going over budget and way long," she continued. "No contractor likes to do that. But nonetheless, this is part of his M.O. of what this administration has been all about."

Host Audie Cornish said the Reflecting Pool had become, to her, a symbol of waste: "a rake. It's stepping on a rake. It's like [an] unnecessary cell phone, and it's costing everyone money. And none of it had to happen."

Avella claimed that presidents have been "stepping on that rake" since the pool was completed in the 1920s, though it did not receive its first overhaul until 2010-2012. "I mean, you're looking at a Reflecting Pool that was built on the Potomac River mudflat, which shifts and you get cracks, and we have been dealing with it."

"Then fix it!" Cornish replied.

"So are you advocating that we get rid of the pool. That it's been such a problem—" he asked, before Cornish cut him off to say it appears Trump is already halfway there.

"Maybe it's time to rip it up," Avella suggested. Cornish pointed to the "botched job," while Avella questioned whether the fault lay with the contractor or with the Reflecting Pool itself. He added that nothing prevents the contractor responsible for the mistakes from being held accountable — a question the National Park Service and Pirro's office may weigh as the project's costs continue to draw public scrutiny.

CNN contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro framed the issue politically, noting how focused Trump is on such projects at a time when Americans are dealing with an affordability crisis. Spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars on projects tied to Trump's personal interests, she suggested, is not playing well.

A swimming pool expert told CNN months ago that the Reflecting Pool's algae problem was unlikely ever to be solved because the pool is so large, and any bird using it would keep reintroducing the bacteria that ultimately cause algae to grow.

The Reflecting Pool was first proposed in 1902 as a means of connecting the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It was overhauled during President Barack Obama's administration from 2010 to 2012 so that it could draw water from the Potomac River rather than draining the city's water supply of the 6.75 million gallons needed to fill it. The heavy granite structure, which had been sinking, was shored up with 2,000 piles driven into bedrock. A circulation and filtration system designed to reduce algae blooms was also installed at that time, but the 12-inch supply and return pipes continue to leak and break — the latest in a recurring pattern of repairs on a structure whose difficult site conditions have complicated every fix since its construction.