As far as the controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool goes, Donald Trump is reverting to type: like any other Florida man with a pool, he won’t admit that maintaining one is complicated and blames external factors when things go wrong. The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool’s base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS’s Ed O’Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. “We had vandalism,” he said. “Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.”
“Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” he wondered aloud. Quite. The President also said that someone had put “fertilizer in the water” which attracted the algae that turned the pool green.
“Six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited, for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this morning. “The 350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors, is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350 foot length. It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition.” He then shared some images of the pool appearing clear again.
The President’s critics have gleefully deployed the peeling coating and murky waters as a metaphor for Trump’s effect on Washington writ large. They lap it up when reporters such as the New York Times’s Maxine Joselow appear on Chris Hayes’s MS NOW show to recount details like how the material used on the bottom of the pool “is called Rhino Liner 5000” that is “typically used in truck bed liners and in pipes including water pipes and sewage pipes” and “not typically used in swimming pools or in large water basins like the Reflecting Pool.” They delight in the fact that the no-bid contract for water purification services was awarded to a 50-year-long friend of Trump, who the Financial Times described in 2022 as “a portly man who looks like the stereotype of a 1930s crime boss, a fat cigar hanging out of his mouth.”
But Cockburn is on board with the President’s mission to Make Washington Beautiful Again. He is delighted to see the fountains flowing once more in Dupont Circle and Meridian Hill Park. He now feels welcomed home when he gets off at Union Station and sees a clean, redeemed Columbus Circle. He imagines that even the most crotchety progressive DC native begrudgingly agrees with him. Focus on the mission, not on the missteps.
On our radar
PARK THAT BIG MACK TRUCK President Trump is heading to Macungie, Pennsylvania, today to deliver remarks at the Mack Trucks facility.
NEVER MIND THE BALLOTS Primary elections take place in Maryland, New York and Utah today. In Maryland, multimillionaire David Trone is trying to win his seat back from multimillionaire Representative April McClain Delaney, while in New York a number of Zohran Mamdani-endorsed progressives are seeking to unseat incumbents.
DON’T KNOW JACK Donald Trump’s name has been fully removed from the Kennedy Center following a court order.
Can we expand the Transfemicide State of Emergency?
There were 24 shooting incidents in Chicago this weekend, according to ABC7, resulting in a total of 39 people shot, six of them fatally. There were shootings in the South Side of Chicago, in Brighton Park, in a hospital, in a McDonald’s… the list goes on.
The violence was acknowledged on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s X account, with a total of three paragraphs of text. Then Johnson made a self-congratulatory Father’s Day post and followed up with this message:
For too many transgender Chicagoans, the sense of belonging they deserve in their city has been denied by exclusion and barriers to opportunity in spaces that should feel safe and welcoming. Since declaring a Transfemicide State of Emergency, our administration has strengthened the City’s capacity to support LGBTQ+ Chicagoans. This framework builds on that work by centering the voices and lived experiences of trans Chicagoans to chart a path toward a safer, more connected city.
Having offered a public statement about a singular Juneteenth event shooting, the mayor’s focus seems to be more pointed toward a more pressing emergency: “transfemicide.”
The New York Post reports there has been one recorded homicide of a transgender woman in Chicago this year.
As he comes down after Pride Weekend, perhaps Mayor Johnson needs a reality check. He seems to have forgotten his job involves the protection of all people. Instead of declaring a state of emergency for a slim minority with a homicide number in the single digits, he could protect everyone while the homicide number is in the triple digits (197 this year, according to the Chicago Tribune).
Tulsi’s texts
Over the past decade or so, people have accused Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset and an Assad toady. The truth may be simpler: what if she’s merely a Hindu cultist?
A Washington Post exclusive reveals confidential memos between Gabbard and an unnamed advisor who may have been the founder of the Hindu sect in which she was raised. Post journalist Jon Swaine examined “hundreds of confidential memos” between Gabbard and an anonymous advisor often referred to as “S.” After comparing the language of the memos with that of possible writers, Swaine posits that “S” is probably the codename of Chris Butler, who founded Gabbard’s sect, the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), in the late 1960s.
Butler has previously been accused by ex-disciples of controlling “his follower’s major life decisions.” According to the content of the memos and Gabbard’s own actions, Butler’s “control” may have extended to Gabbard’s personal statements during interviews, her body language, her X posts and even her legislation.
One example is a memo from 2014, which called Gabbard to propose legislation that would penalize countries with citizens involved in Islamist extremist organizations. “Get it started in the morning,” the person in the memo said. “You need to be the leader in this regard. Don’t dick around.” Gabbard made a statement to that effect the very next day.
Gabbard officially resigned from her position as the Director of National Intelligence four days ago.
Her spokesperson labeled the Post report as a “blatant example of anti-Hindu bigotry.” Representatives of SIF (including Butler himself) refused to comment and Gabbard’s chief of staff pointed out that the woman who first released the memos is currently in a $250,000 lawsuit against SIF and may be “seeking personal profit, not truth.”
Or, a politician frequently touted for her “freethinking” may have been acting under the guidance of a cult leader. Cockburn will keep Gabbard in his prayers. Om…
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