President Trump claims the problems with the Reflecting Pool in Washington are due to vandalism.
The pool has taken on clouds of algae after a hasty renovation. A three-time Olympian was charged with destroying government property after he says he touched one of the strands of blue paint peeling off the pool’s bottom.
Larry Sabato is not questioning whether Donald Trump still owns the Republican Party. He thinks the party should just go ahead and put the president's name on the door.Speaking with Alex Witt on MS NOW Saturday, the University of Virginia political scientist and Crystal Ball editor said Trump remains firmly in control of the GOP, which Sabato suggested be "renamed the Trump party." He tied that grip directly to the movement around the president, calling it "part and parcel of the cult, the MAGA cult." Trump does not win every primary fight, Sabato allowed, but his endorsed candidates stay competitive and he can often shove them over the line.Then came the part Republicans should worry about.A MAGA base, Sabato argued, tops out at roughly 35 percent of the electorate, and no one wins a general election on that alone, no matter how fired up the turnout. "That's where Tump has really been falling short," he said. The president is unpopular with Democrats, which surprises no one, but Sabato zeroed in on a group that actually decides elections: independents. They usually break close to evenly, he noted, around 55-45 at most. Trump, in some surveys, is carrying an unfavorable or poor job-approval rating of 65 to 70 percent with that group. "That's where it's going to hurt republicans this fall," he said.The conversation turned to Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins won the Republican Senate runoff with a late push from Trump and will now face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Sabato pointed to a Politico framing that Democrats had landed the opponent they wanted, and he did not hedge on it. Ossoff is "clearly the favorite," he said, and the race is "not a toss up."Sabato did not pretend the outcome is sealed. Things can go sideways, he acknowledged. But he described an Ossoff who is making an impression well beyond Georgia, recounting a recent non-political gathering where people kept telling him they were impressed and wanted to see Ossoff run for president. He paired that with the senator's campaign war chest, then turned to Collins, who he said was the weaker choice and has "some rough edges, and that's putting it kindly." Suburban Republicans, in his read, are not exactly thrilled to vote for the man.The bigger picture is what should keep GOP strategists up at night. Asked where Senate control is heading, Sabato reached back a year, when almost no Democrat and zero Republicans believed the chamber would even be in play. Now, he said, it is genuinely competitive. Democrats still need a lot to break their way, with Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and possibly other states all in the mix, but he insisted the path is real and visible in a way it simply was not twelve months ago.His parting warning was aimed at Democrats as much as Republicans. To matter in the Senate, where every state gets two seats regardless of size, the party cannot keep itself penned into blue enclaves. The opening Sabato sees is wide enough to run through this fall. Whether Democrats are built to do it, this cycle and beyond, is the question he left hanging Saturday.
The White House is getting a harsh response from numerous observers to its latest claim about the Reflecting Pool.When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared on X that the press had lost its mind over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, she likely expected applause rather than a fact-check. Sharing a post that ridiculed the coverage, she wrote, "So true, and so sad. The liberal media is truly deranged." The line fit neatly into a broader MAGA effort to recast the pool's very public failure as a symptom of "Trump Derangement Syndrome." It did not land that way.The most pointed rebuttal came a day earlier from author and columnist John A. Daly, whose post was amplified by former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Daly argued that conservatives had manufactured the entire spectacle before turning around to whine about it, writing that "as with the Epstein Files, MAGA made a huge media-story out of the Reflecting Pool, only to turn around and complain about how much media attention it's received after blowing up in their faces."That observation cuts to the heart of why Leavitt's complaint rang hollow. The pool became a national story because the president personally made it one. Trump ordered the renovation that ballooned past $14 million, had the basin painted "American flag blue" for the country's 250th anniversary, and promoted it relentlessly. When the water bloomed green and the fresh surface began peeling away in sheets, he escalated rather than retreated, blaming "radical left lunatics," accusing an ABC News reporter of fueling the story, and claiming that "multiple individuals" faced "years in jail" for vandalism.Political scientist Ian Bremmer conceded the coverage was excessive but pinned the blame squarely on the president, noting that the saturation existed "in part because president trump spent too much time on it when he should have been talking about more important issues." Conservative Trump critics Tom Nichols piled on by circulating a chart that mocked the president's exaggerated claims about the reflecting pool's size.""Yes it’s a mystery," Nichols wrote in response with the chart. Conservative lawyer George Conway added, "You're kind of right: Instead of talking about how your boss turned the reflecting pool into the world's largest Petri dish, we should talking how he signed an instrument of surrender to Iran at Versailles. Of course, the only reason why we're talking about the reflecting pool is because he was bragging about how he was fixing it."Kinzinger also chimed in, "You guys made this a story. Brag about how awesome it is and a week later pretend you never cared anyway."Leavitt wanted the public to believe the media had conjured this controversy out of nothing. But people pointed out that her own administration spent two weeks building it, brick by brick, and the people she blamed simply reported what the White House kept handing them.You guys made this a story. Brag about how awesome it is and a week later pretend you never cared anyway https://t.co/64jnihbWFo pic.twitter.com/rnqjgPLU6n— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 20, 2026
A journalist went down to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to see Donald Trump's renovation up close, and the most damning review came from the wildlife. The reflecting pool is "worse than you think" it is, ex-lawyer Aaron Parnas says in a video posted this weekend that drew nearly 40,000 views. "The ducks won't swim in it at all."What the camera captured does not flatter a project the administration sold as a centerpiece for the country's 250th anniversary. Parnas pans across water that should be a crisp "American flag blue" and finds it a swampy green instead, with debris drifting on the surface and sheets of paint peeling away from the bottom. "This pool is blue, by the way. It's supposed to be blue," he says dryly, dipping a gloved hand into the murk. "I'm going to go sanitize my hands now, because that was gross."The footage also shows what taxpayers are now funding to undo the damage. National Park Service crews in protective gear work the edges with aeration pumps and vacuums, scooping algae out of a basin that turned within days of being refilled. Parnas notes that ducklings perched on the side of the pool won't even get in the water.The science is not mysterious, whatever the White House would prefer. Shallow, sunny, stagnant pools bloom fast in summer heat, especially when nutrients from runoff and wildlife feed the growth. None of that has stopped Trump from blaming vandals, "radical left lunatics," and a reporter for the mess.Parnas skipped the conspiracy theories and let the pool speak for itself. "Just gross," he then added.
Donald Trump returned to his favorite subject Saturday evening, and his account of the great Reflecting Pool conspiracy grew more elaborate with every sentence. In a lengthy Truth Social post, the president announced that "many additional people have been arrested" over what he called "the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool," then offered a list of crimes that has expanded well beyond the algae and peeling paint that started the whole saga.According to Trump, the vandals did not merely tamper with the water. They "took some form of knife or blade" and carved a "250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade," and they "poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool." He framed the alleged sabotage as an insult to history, writing that the damage was "a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly." He added that he met with contractors and may be "forced to release and drain much of the water" to complete repairs.The president also delivered a characteristic burst of self-praise wrapped around a shaky history lesson. He claimed the pool "hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built," insisted his version "worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish," and declared it had never been "so beautiful as it was just one week ago." That timeline quietly undercuts itself, since a structure that worked perfectly a week ago would most likely not need to be drained and repaired now.What Trump did not provide, once again, was evidence. The only confirmed arrest so far is David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian charged with a misdemeanor after he touched a piece of paint that had already come loose, an accusation he denies. A second man was reportedly cited for putting his hand in the water. Neither episode resembles a knife-wielding chemical attack on a national monument.
Mary Trump has spent years telling anyone who will listen that her uncle cannot bear to be seen losing. This week she pointed to a tarp draped over the Kennedy Center as her latest exhibit.In the newest edition of her newsletter, the segment she calls "Trump Trolls Trump," the clinical psychologist and niece of the president argued that the covering left over the building's facade was not about construction logistics. It was about ego. Crews began stripping Donald Trump's name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after a federal judge ruled the renaming illegal, and Mary Trump claimed the tarp stayed up for a revealing reason. Because he is "such an insecure, thin skinned baby," she wrote, "they left the tarp up so we cannot actually watch Donald's letters being removed."It is the kind of read that lands differently coming from her than from an ordinary commentator. As the president's niece and the author of a bestselling book diagnosing the psychology of her own family, Mary Trump has built her public profile on the argument that her uncle's behavior is driven by a fragile need to never appear weak. The tarp, in her telling, is that need made physical.The underlying events are not in dispute. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper determined that the president's name had been illegally added to the center, after a board stacked with Trump loyalists voted in December 2025 to rebrand it. The court ordered the name removed and blocked the administration's plan to close the venue for a lengthy renovation. After a last-minute scramble of appeals and a requested extension blamed on thunderstorms, workers began prying the lettering off the facade in the early hours of June 13, with scaffolding and tarp covering the wall.Mary Trump found the cover-up almost too fitting. The same tarp meant to spare her uncle the indignity of watching his own name come down, she noted, also blocks the public from seeing the name of the man the building was actually built to honor. "We cannot see the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy," she wrote, "the man for whom the Kennedy Center was actually named."She returned to the theme that animates her entire project: a man who treats every loss as something to be hidden, spun, or blamed on someone else. Throughout the newsletter she refers to him only as "Donald," a small but deliberate choice that keeps the family relationship in the frame and strips away the deference of his title.Her broader point was not subtle. The week, she argued, was a parade of self-inflicted embarrassments dressed up as strength, "corruption masquerading as governance" and "incompetence disguised as confidence." The Kennedy Center tarp simply gave her the cleanest image for it.The claim that the tarp was kept up to shield Trump's feelings is Mary Trump's interpretation, not a stated explanation from the administration, which has cited the appeals process and the building's condition.
One of Trump's own cabinet members compared him to his liberal nemesis, according to a new report.In the book Regime Change, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is revealed to say that Trump is the same as billionaire liberal donor George Soros, according to reporting by The Guardian."Trump reminded him...of his old boss, the legendary investor and major Democratic donor George Soros," reads a passage of the book shared by The Guardian in which Bessent speaks to his associates. "'They are the same animal,' Bessent said."Soros is a constant target of MAGA and Trump, who even threatened to investigate him for racketeering in Truth Social posts. Bessent worked as the chief investment officer at the Soros Fund Management and reportedly played a big role in building the fortune that has fueled Soros’ political and charitable donations, according to previous reporting.Last year, Bessent reportedly told a room full of billionaires that both Trump and Soros are "impatient," according to reporting by Bloomberg.The Regime Change passage highlighted in The Guardian reporting details how negotiations between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy stalled because Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fought over how a minerals deal should be worded. Trump reportedly went around Bessent and Lutnick and "asked J.D. Vance's wife, Usha, also a Yale Law School graduate, to review the Ukrainian edits to the minerals deal," according to a passage from the book published by The Guardian. "She declared the document 'awful,' and [took] a heavy pencil to it."
Of all the people Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could have compared Donald Trump to, he reportedly landed on the one name engineered to make a Republican flinch: George Soros.According to "Regime Change," the new account of Trump's second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Bessent told associates that Trump reminded him of his old boss, the billionaire investor and Democratic megadonor the right has spent two decades casting as its all-purpose supervillain. "They are the same animal," Bessent said, per the book.That is a striking thing for any sitting Trump official to put into words, and it lands even harder coming from Bessent, who built part of his Wall Street career working for Soros before he ran the Treasury. When he went looking for something to capture Trump, in other words, he picked the man whose name conservative fundraising emails use as shorthand for everything they claim to be fighting. The comparison is, by the book's account, his private assessment of the president he serves.The Soros line is the most quietly damaging revelation, but it is not the only one. "Regime Change," set for worldwide release Tuesday, also reports that Bessent had blunt and unkind things to say about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the run-up to the infamous February 2025 Oval Office meeting.Bessent, the authors write, had strongly urged Trump not to even let Zelenskyy into the White House until he had signed a minerals deal the treasury secretary had drafted. Behind closed doors, his language about the wartime leader was harsher still. "I've dealt with this little f------," Bessent reportedly told associates, calling Zelenskyy "tricky," describing him as "the special-needs child for the Europeans," and saying he was "acting like Mr Bean on crack."Zelenskyy came anyway, and the meeting collapsed in real time as Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated him for insufficient gratitude and for not wearing a suit. Bessent was also in the room. Afterward he told Bloomberg that Zelenskyy had scored "one of the great diplomatic own goals," professing himself "shocked, shocked" at the visitor's conduct.