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The shallow authoritarianism of Trump’s Reflecting Pool

The sordid saga on the Washington Mall reveals why Trump’s efforts to consolidate power keep failing.

What should one make of the president’s mounting obsession with the Reflecting Pool?

On the surface, it’s ridiculous. Noting that the pool was full of algae and not reflecting as well as it should, President Donald Trump launched an expensive beautification effort — repainting the bottom and trying chemical treatments to treat the algae. The end result: a new algae bloom likely caused by the new paint color.

Go a little deeper, and it’s ominous. Trump bypassed normal federal contracting procedures to provide a no-bid contract for Reflecting Pool beautification to a personal acquaintance who had previously pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe a politician. When it went badly, the president started lobbing accusations without evidence about saboteurs mucking up his very strong and very beautiful renovation. Now Trump says six people have been arrested on vandalism charges, including a former US Olympian, David Hearn, who claims he merely touched material in the pool. Trump is threatening alleged vandals with 10-year prison sentences.

Go deeper still, and it’s a metaphor for any number of different dysfunctions in the current White House, from ignoring experts to scapegoating failures.

But if we get down to the American-flag blue bottom of it, the Reflecting Pool saga reflects the most basic dynamic of the second Trump administration: He’s an authoritarian at heart — and also very bad at authoritarianism.

Over and over again, Trump has proven to be unfocused, distractable, and self-sabotaging — and the culprit, as now, is frequently a small symbolic issue that blows up into a giant proxy war over his ego. If American democracy proves resilient in his second term, these time-consuming distractions will be a major part of the story.

Trump’s shiny obsessions

Donald Trump has always been a gaudy man. What often catches and holds the president’s interests are symbolic issues of no particular........

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