Trump Leads the Real Band of Vandals Responsible for the Reflecting Pool Debacle

In announcing on Friday evening, i.e., the time of the week when one tries to bury bad news, that they were dropping the felony charges against a former Olympian who was accused of destroying the lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, federal prosecutors acknowledged something that everybody already knew: Donald Trump’s claims of “deranged vandals” damaging the landmark were a bunch of baloney.

And, yet, too many people went along with it. There were other government officials, like Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who willingly played their part in this sordid charade; the prosecutors themselves, who brought these frivolous charges; and even many in the media, who waffled on whether the president was making it all up (again) when he and others seemed to be convinced that a bunch of anti-monument marauders had cut a football field-length gash in the Reflecting Pool.

It was remarkable to see how many news outlets still give Trump (and those lying on his behalf) the benefit of the doubt.

When are they going to learn that it must be assumed that the president is lying until there is incontrovertible proof that he isn’t?

Just in the past few days, there was a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia until there wasn’t; Ukraine was being allowed to manufacture its own Patriot missiles until it wasn’t; and a peace deal between Israel and Hamas was reached which will likely not materialize — not to speak of the few dozen times when Iran supposedly begged Trump to cut a deal to end that war (which isn’t even a war and, in any case, has been won many times already).

Obviously, all those are much more consequential examples of a president and his administration just making things up as they go along.

However, the Reflecting Pool saga is important because it represents a microcosm of Trump’s second term. It featured blatant lies, a subservient justice system, corruption, grift, pointless vanity projects, and a mindless horde of followers just nodding along to it all.

More than anything, however, it laid bare what is really being destroyed before our eyes.

A vandal is someone who damages or demolishes property on purpose.

We happen to view the government as something that belongs to the people. In that sense, it is the property of all of those who pay for it in the form of taxes.

And Trump and his entire administration are hellbent on sabotaging, pillaging, and destroying that government.

They are the real vandals here, which makes it worth looking back at the president’s own words from the social media post we embedded above.

“What kind of animals would do such a thing?”

Indeed! Who would want to demolish, instead of improve, the government of the United States? Yes, it is an unwieldy behemoth, and there is plenty of waste, fraud, and abuse to deal with, but it also provides services that are essential to the vast majority of Americans.

Trump likes to talk about how, “If we don’t do or have X, then we don’t have a country anymore.” That is actually true when it comes to a functioning government. Without it, a few elites will run roughshod over everybody else even more than they already do.

And, sadly, the government is not made of “vandal-proof” material, which allows Trump and the people behind Project 2025 to destroy it from within for their own benefit.

We can only hope that, one day, they will be “prosecuted to the MAX.”