Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
To take an example of what we mean by that headline, consider the observation that "Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." Do you think it aptly describes a president who is known for his fake tan and fake combover, not to mention his fake facts? Or how about "The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance"? Or "In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes"?
It is the latter aphorism, which is credited to John Ruskin, that we particularly had in mind as we were putting this item together. Donald Trump, aided and abetted by his fawning lackeys, has made several high-profile moves meant to promote his own greatness, and to boost his own ego. And they keep blowing up in his face, in spectacular fashion. There were significant developments of this sort on two different fronts this week.
To start, if you were trying to write some sort of slapstick comedy involving a president and his inability to manage a simple task like renovating a reflecting pool, you probably couldn't come up with a script as slapsticky as what has already happened. We have already written about the silly goal that launched the project (make it bluer!), the dubious funding, the no-bid contract awarded to a firm that had no business taking on the project, the failure of the new lining brought on (in part) by driving the presidential limousine over it before it had cured properly, the false accusations of sabotage against that lining and, of course, the out-of-control algal blooms.
Well, in the last week, things have gone even further downhill. To start with, the contractor who screwed up the job (Atlantic Industrial Coatings) admitted, in documents acquired by The New York Times, that the new lining did not fail due to vandalism, but instead to shoddy execution. It's a little weedy, but the White House insisted on an approach that would produce particular results in a very rapid fashion. The firm did not have the expertise to make the unorthodox approach work properly, or else to say to the administration "This is guaranteed to fail."
And that leads us to the next black eye for the administration. The fellow who was charged with vandalizing the pool was former Olympic canoeist Davey Hearn. It's somewhat remarkable that the case got past a grand jury but, in any event, Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Tod Edelman dismissed the charges against Hearn yesterday. And they were dismissed with prejudice, which means they cannot be brought again, no matter how cranky Trump—or his toady, U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. Jeanine Pirro—gets.
That does not mean that Trump has heard the last of Hearn, however. To start with, the former Olympian has become something of a hero of the resistance, and is headlining various protest actions around the country. This weekend, for example, he'll be part of an event at Hains Point in D.C. Further, he is also planning to sue the Trump administration for malicious prosecution. Maybe Hearn can get a piece of that sweet, sweet $1.776 billion weaponization fund, since the forces of the government were most certainly weaponized against him.
At the moment, the White House appears to have given up on this boondoggle, as the administration either doesn't have any clue as to how to move forward, or else doesn't have the energy/interest. As a result, the Lincoln Reflecting Pool is currently fenced off and empty. And it has also become exactly what Trump wanted: A monument to his "leadership." This picture is all over social media right now:
We thought it might be AI-generated, or something like that, but it's definitely real. The most common caption: "Everything Trump touches dies."
And helping to make that point is our second, related news item from the week. As readers will recall, the Kennedy Center is awash in red ink right now. Trump says that putting his name back is the only way to save it. Pretty much everyone else says that Trump's having added his name is what caused the problem in the first place. Yesterday, CNN published a story based on documents it was able to obtain; those documents strongly support the latter interpretation of events.
Once Trump resumed being president, and started mucking around with the Kennedy Center, revenues cratered. The venue's deficit was $16 million in 2025, and is going to grow to something like $23 million this year. It has run through most of its reserve fund, and needs the rest for necessary capital improvements. Further, in something of an irony, donation pledges to the Kennedy Center are down by more than 100%. That brings to mind Trump's claim that he's caused prescription prices to drop more than 100%, which is impossible. But in this case, it's true.
Since donation pledges are ongoing, a person might commit to giving $500 a year every year, starting in 2022 (i.e., Joe Biden, year 2). The value of the pledges that have been canceled this year is far greater than the value of the pledges that have been made since Trump re-took office. And so, Trump has seen the venue lose well north of 100% of the pledge money brought in during his second term. The extent to which that is "the economy" versus "I hate Trump" is unknown, although the type of people who have the extra cash to support a fine arts venue usually aren't the type to be at risk of missing rent if gas goes up by twenty cents a gallon.
The Iran War, as we note above, is an epic disaster for Trump. But we cannot also forget the many and varied lesser disasters that also dot his résumé. (Z)