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Reflecting on the Trump Era

Trump’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation should have been an easy lift. But it quickly became a monument to failure.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes exploded at Trump administration attorneys on Monday after they admitted more than 400 trees had been cut down at a D.C. public golf course that President Donald Trump wants to turn into a championship-level course, like those of his personal properties.

“430 trees!” Reyes raged. “I had said at the May hearing that I didn’t want 10 trees chopped down without someone having notice.” She continued, “In what universe did anyone in your office think that that was acceptable?”

It was refreshing to hear someone erupting at Trump administration minions, if only about the destruction of trees. In a saner world, someone, anyone would be bellowing at Trump or his top officials on a daily basis. There would be real anger about the killing of 238 civilians in extrajudicial boat strikes, the slaying of more than 150 in an Iranian elementary school attack, the deaths of anti-ICE protesters on American streets, and on so many other injustices.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees, even if those trees have been uprooted against a judge’s order.

But sometimes, paying close attention to the lesser sins of an immoral, megalomaniacal president can tell us something important. Today, I examine what the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — which is being refilled as I write — says about a White House in free fall and a president who can’t win for losing.

– Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch

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An Iconic Transformation

It was dark and cold when I first spotted him, sitting serenely, bathed in soft light. The statue of Abraham Lincoln at his memorial in Washington, D.C., sits 19 feet tall and weighs 120 tons — a white marble monument dedicated to one of the nation’s most intelligent, eloquent, and moral presidents.

I hadn’t come to gaze upon Lincoln but at the reflecting pool that bears his name. It’s been transformed into a different kind of landmark by the inane, inarticulate, and completely immoral man who now holds that same office Lincoln did.

President Donald Trump wants to remake the landscape of Washington D.C., tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a monstrosity of a ballroom; adding his name to the Kennedy Center or demolishing it if he can’t; and installing a 250-foot-tall “Triumphal Arch” that will “house … large numbers of drones, plus snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas.” This past weekend, the administration even defied a judge’s order and ripped up 430 mature trees at East Potomac Golf Links, a municipal course in southeastern Washington that Trump wants to refashion into a championship-level course, like those of his personal properties.

Trump’s rehabilitation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — planned to be complete for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4 — should have been the easiest lift of his planned remodel of the nation’s capital. But it quickly became a monument to failure.

Back in April, Trump said adding a bargain-priced “industrial-grade swimming pool topping” in “American flag blue” to the reflecting pool would leave it looking “gorgeous, beautiful” and would “last for 40 or 50 years.” Instead, the renovation — awarded via a no-bid contract and announced as America 250 festivities on the National Mall approached — started to fail within days. This was followed by a bright green algae bloom and finally a catastrophic lining failure that saw Trump’s chosen coating blister, peel, and then separate from the concrete.

When I visited, the only water in the iconic national landmark — which Martin Luther King Jr. overlooked as he made his historic 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech — was a stagnant puddle that stretched out toward a mass of rotting leaves, a motley collection of plastic beverage bottles, a silver-and-blue aluminum can of RAIN spring water, and a pair of heavy-duty spray bottles often used for commercial cleaning chemicals.

What I witnessed was emblematic of a White House far out of its depth and completely overwhelmed by disasters — large and small — of its own making. From Washington, D.C., to the Middle East, the Trump administration has been humiliated. It’s a disaster wrapped in fiascos inside a swirling catastrophe, to riff off Winston Churchill’s famed line. These nested failures are legion. The attack on the elementary school in Minab — which killed more than 150 people, most of them children — within the larger failure of the Iran war. The extrajudicial executions of defenseless, shipwrecked survivors within the murderous boat strike campaign. The killings of unarmed people by federal immigration agents and deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody during the larger administration project of anti-immigrant cruelty.

The........

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