First, let’s make this clear: Trump started all of the nonsense about the Reflecting Pool. His cottage cheese brain fixated on it as it moved on from the ballroom, and he simply cannot stop bringing it up all the time. So yeah, both the news media and the rest of us are going to talk about it.
And unlike all of the other Trump failures—save the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center—this one doesn’t carry a tragedy inside it which makes it hard to enjoy. I mean I have to admit to some satisfaction in seeing him kowtow to the Iranian government in an attempt to salvage the midterms (that will fail), but that is immediately overwhelmed by the knowledge that at least 100 innocent Iranian school girls lost their lives because the reprehensible Secretary of Defense let AI pick targets.
But the Reflecting Pool is a pure guilty pleasure. Watching Trump flail around and make it worse with every new brainstorm is binge-worthy streaming. It could not happen to a nicer guy. And it’s not a complicated constitutional or legal question that needs a lot of explanation. It’s a pool of river water that Trump is treating like a swimming pool and there’s really no nuance that needs to be use to buffer the mockery and ridicule.
Over the last few days the Ridiculous Meter went to 11. Not content with the spectacle of fully-armed National Guard troops accosting and threatening people who simply put their hands in the water, on Tuesday the patrols also included Park Police and regular police:
Party in the USA, y’all.
And all of this is because President Obama lives in a gaudy palace in Trump’s head. Think I’m kidding? He brought up Obama again on Tuesday morning:
And yes, the Obama repairs did stop using potable water and instead used water from the Potomac to fill the pool…after it had been through a state of the art filtration system. Which Trump had ripped out thus causing the terrible algae problem.
It’s hilarious.
He talked about it again as he was headed off to Pennsylvania to give a speech:
Q: You mentioned that the Interior Dept has video of photos. We reached out to them & they haven't shared it w/ usTRUMP: They will share it. They've arrested I think 6 people on the reflecting pool. So, the reflecting pool looks fantastic. Somebody went in with a knife and cut it, a 350 foot slit
Oh and earlier he said that nothing could cut through the pool sealant. But reality is over-rated when you’re a rotting sausage whose casing is failing.
And just like with the Kennedy Center, Trump knows we hate him and is trying to kill our fun:
OMG. Days ago I jokingly posted Trump would put up a tarp hiding the Reflecting Pool and here's the fence. I'll bet the tarp is coming next.
— Peter Gleick (@petergleick.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T20:58:20.660Z
But he can’t kill it. Watching him continually overreact to something that he keeps making worse is fun and funny. And the one thing that authoritarians cannot permit is people mocking them and bringing them down to size.
And the story just keeps delivering. Like when the New York Times found out the identity of the person hired to paint the Reflecting Pool—this guy:
Or this take about the fences going up around it:
We must encase the reflecting pool inside a ballroom
— Michael McDonald (@electproject.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T19:12:31.752Z
Or the pro-algae protestors who showed up to add to the circus:
And I think we’ve found the source of the 350 (was 250) foot hole in the sealant:
*BREAKING – the vandal has been identified as none other than dumbass Don, himself, who had his motorcade drive across the emptied basin right after it had been painted and sealed. http://www.snopes.com/fact-check/t…
And it’s true that 6 people have been arrested, a la the sandwich throwing guy and so should also end up with the charges dropped. For example, David Hearn said he was never read his Miranda rights:
“I had no idea I was about to be arrested,” Hearn said. “They didn’t say they were charging me, but they did start to handcuff me. They did not ever read me my rights. They did not allow me any phone calls for the ensuing five hours, and they did not detail the charges that were going to be leveled against me.”
Trump told us that he will have the Reflecting Pool all cleaned up by July 4th, so in the meantime we should enjoy his frenzied attempts that will most likely end in failure. Think of it as his birthday present to the nation that ever-increasingly hates his guts.
I’ll leave you with this: