{"id":791,"date":"2026-06-22T22:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T22:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2026-06-22T22:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T22:13:09","slug":"trumps-latest-attempt-to-defy-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Latest Attempt to Defy Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of <\/i>The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more Inside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump spent the weekend trying to calm the waters in Washington and roil them in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with the less serious of these two self-inflicted crises. This spring, Trump for some reason became fixated on the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, which had not previously been a topic of national discussion, but which he believes should vibrate with a deep Technicolor blue. The administration awarded no-bid contracts for both a color coating and a new water-purification system, with the latter going to a company tied to a Trump-campaign donor previously convicted of conspiracy to bribe. Surprising no one, both parts of the project have been a disaster. As my colleague Matt Viser has vividly reported, the pool is beset with algae, and the blue coating is coming off in big chunks.<\/p>\n

Now Trump says water will likely have to be removed from the pool to do \u201cnecessary repairs\u201d\u2014in other words, $16.4 million in taxpayer money will go down the drain. (Credit where it\u2019s due, though: This may become the first time Trump will have actually drained a swamp.) He also blamed vandals for the issues, though the White House has offered no evidence to suggest that\u2019s true. Visitors who approached the pool this weekend were shooed away by National Guard members, and at least one who touched the pool\u2019s broken liner was arrested; he denies doing any damage. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, promised to throw the book at vandals, which mostly seems like a good way for her to extend her record of failing to get D.C. grand juries to green-light tenuous prosecutions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump nearly upended peace negotiations between Vice President Vance and Iranian leaders in Switzerland. Over the weekend, Iran claimed it had once more blocked the Strait of Hormuz because of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which appears to violate the fragile cease-fire in place. Whether the strait is actually closed is not entirely clear: The Trump administration says traffic is flowing, but third-party analysts say traffic has slowed, though not totally stopped, and remains well below prewar levels. Over the weekend, Trump told the Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that he had told Iranian officials, \u201cYou close it and you won\u2019t have a country,\u201d adding, \u201cYou won\u2019t even make it back to your fucking country.\u201d On Truth Social, he said that if Iran didn\u2019t rein in Hezbollah, he would \u201chit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Threatening to kill interlocutors in the middle of a peace negotiation is generally seen as uncouth, in addition to counterproductive. Today, Vance was left to tell the Iranians that, in essence, they should just write off his threats as bluster: \u201cWhat we told the Iranians yesterday is that when you guys engage in what us Millennials might call trash talk, you can\u2019t expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Trump\u2019s repeated blaming of vandals for damaging the pool, Trump is talking, but no one\u2019s really paying much attention. Iran seems to have already concluded that it doesn\u2019t need to take Trump seriously, which is a mixed blessing: good because it meant the Iranians didn\u2019t quit the negotiations, but bad for the prospects of the U.S. reaching a favorable deal.<\/p>\n

The Iran war and the Reflecting Pool, though very different in scale and importance, share some illuminating parallels. In both cases, Trump embarked on a project while blaming the Obama administration, his persistent bugbear, for an alleged problem: Iranian aggression or an insufficiently azure pool. In both cases, he charged forward without a fleshed-out plan, preferring to fly by the seat of his pants, and ignored the experts who warned of exactly the problems that resulted\u2014algal blooms, a blocked strait.<\/p>\n

These are familiar patterns for Trump. What sets Iran and the Reflecting Pool apart from some previous cases is that he has been unable to deny reality. In the past, Trump has spun setbacks as victories, lying prodigiously to do so. In the case of his bogus claim of a stolen 2020 election, for example, he has relied on generalized public distrust of institutions, robust conservative media, and the arcana of election procedure to help create at least some doubt.<\/p>\n

Read more What Will Happen to Birthright Citizenship?<\/a><\/p>\n

But no one can deny that the Reflecting Pool is, in fact, currently green. Nor can Trump spin the war in Iran\u2014not when Americans spent weeks filling up their cars with gas that spiked well above $4 a gallon, and not when ships are visibly bottled up in the strait. These failures are plain in a way that exceeds even Trump\u2019s capacity to get his supporters to believe him over their own eyes. A new CBS News\/YouGov poll finds that just 39 percent of Republicans believe the U.S. got the better end of the peace agreement. Only 22 percent of Americans overall think so.<\/p>\n

Now Trump\u2019s only recourse is trying again, almost certainly with worse results. Vance is celebrating a tentative agreement to merely restore nuclear inspections\u2014a safeguard present in Obama\u2019s hated deal with Iran\u2014even as the U.S. makes concessions such as allowing Iran to sell more oil. Trump badly wants the Reflecting Pool fixed by July 4, but it\u2019s unclear if that is possible; if it is, doing so will almost certainly cost millions more in taxpayer money. The president chose two unnecessary battles and lost them both, and the American people will pay.<\/p>\n

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