Why I didn't do it
June 24, 2026
A pre•emptive alibi, and a tip of the swim cap to journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Not that I’m paranoid but given where this may be headed, I thought it prudent to get ahead of the story.
Much as I’ve enjoyed my previous visits to the nation’s capital, I was not in Washington D.C. last week, nor the week before, nor the week before the week before as things started to go awry just up from the Tidal Basin. I’m referring to the putrid, solar-powered algae bloom at the newly re-lined reflecting pool between the Lincoln and Washington monuments.
In case you missed it, the nation’s President, Donald J. Trump, unilaterally decided the famous reflecting pool was deficient (he blamed his predecessors) and needed a makeover in advance of this year’s July 4th celebration. This involved having the pool temporarily drained so he could have an “American flag blue” liner installed to make the water appear blue, and installing a new water purification system. Without consulting Congress, Trump authorized no-bid contracts for the liner $14.7 million and $1.7 million for a new water filtration system.
You may have heard about this. Within days the re-filled pool went from flag blue to a putrid green. The cause was the massive algae bloom, the toxic effects of which included dead waterfowl. As with many Trump ventures there was more than a hint of grift attached—the no-bid contract for the filtration system had been awarded to a firm named Green Water Solutions led by John J. Cafaro, one of Trump’s south Florida neighbors and campaign donors. Mr. Cafaro made news in 2010 when he was found guilty of conspiring to bribe Ohio Congressman James Traficant.
In addition to the run-away algae bloom, portions of the flag-blue liner became detached. By then the pool had become both a curiosity for natives, tourists and reporters, like the well-known ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl (Karl has written four books on the Trump presidencies) who used a video (below) to illustrate the problem with the deteriorating liner, a piece of which he touched with his hand while making a video.
By then arrests had begun, including that of former Olympian David Hearn who was cited for two misdemeanors after reaching into the putrid water. When asked by a Fox News reporter whether Karl was “in trouble” for reaching into the water and touching a piece of the detached blue liner, the former Fox News Host “Judge Jeanine” Pirro (now the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia) replied : “It depends. Anyone who is in position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the reflecting pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C.”
That didn’t sound so good.
And then the President weighed in with the might of his keen forensic insight. Vandals were at work, he declared on Monday, telling reporters that there’s been a 350 foot-long slit in the liner “with a box cutter or knife of some kind.” To which he added: “I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor. They cut it and then they lifted it. They pulled it. And that’s what it is.”
My alibi for Father’s Day weekend, with my daughter at a Spokane sports bar Saturday evening. The menus were redacted.
(The New York Times and other news outlets have noted that neither Trump nor the National Park Service have offered actual evidence of vandalism aimed at the liner or other work on the pool.)
I don’t know where this leads but I’m suddenly conscious of my aquatic paraphernalia which—because I bike to my swimming hole—includes small tire irons for flat tire emergencies. Perhaps they could be mistaken for box cutters. But I also have several witnesses to my withdrawal from large swimming pools. After training in the lanes of pools for decades I developed a strong aversion to aquatic tile—not such that I wanted to to maim it, but to avoid it altogether. I had developed something like pool fatigue, what with the chlorine and confinement. If it doesn’t flow, I will not go. And I can account for my presence in the PNW for every day in the past month. So there. Nobody who knows me well would place me in an algae-rife pool with sharp instruments of any sort.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at a joint interview on MS Now’s Morning Joe
On a more serious note, Monday was the release day for Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s remarkable book on the second Trump presidency—REGIME CHANGE, Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
Both Haberman and Swan write for the New York Times. Haberman has won a Pulitzer Prize (2018) for her reporting on Trump’s conspicuous connections with Russia and Swan is heralded for his taut interview techniques, notably his interviews with Trump.
They were making the rounds yesterday giving long interviews about the book and its as yet-unrefuted details of how the second Trump term is ensconced in corruptions and an insular loyalty bond that is arrayed not just against the press, the political opposition, pundits and comedians but against objective realities of all sorts.
Haberman has a reputation as the “Trump-whisperer” for her access and deportment with Trump whom she’s covered for nearly three decades. He’s often abusive toward her—often referring to her as “Maggot” instead of Maggie—and castigating her reporting but without directly refuting the reports.
The book is chock-full of revelations about the blind loyalty and dysfunction in the second Trump regime, but two stood out to me from their interviews yesterday.
The first is an account of the key meeting in the run-up to the current war with Iran, with these warnings to Trump, that Trump ultimately ignored:
“When Trump joined the meeting, [CIA Director] Ratcliffe briefed him on the U.S. intelligence assessment of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s presentation. The CIA director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenario. Farcical. At that point, Rubio cut in. In other words, it’s bullshit, he said. Several others jumped in, including [Vice President JD] Vance, just back from Azerbaijan, who also expressed strong skepticism about the prospect of regime change.
The president then turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine. “General, what do you think?”
Caine replied, “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure. For the Israelis, they oversell and their plans are not always well developed. They know they need us and that’s why they’re hard selling.”
Caine shared with Trump and members of the cabinet, the military assessment that a major campaign against Iran would dramatically deplete stockpiles of American weaponry with no clear path to quickly replenish. He was deeply worried about both the potential for significant American casualties and the further depletion of munitions and missile interceptors strained after years of support for Ukraine and Israel. He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the strait of Hormuz and the risks of Iran shutting the strait. A scenario Trump dismissed on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before it came to that.”
And thus Trump ordered up the attack on Iran, joined by the Israelis and their attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Please support this project by becoming an annual subscriber to The Daily Rhubarb at the link below.—tjc
Near the end of their interview with Lawrence O’Donnell Monday evening Haberman offered an anecdote that helps explain why Trump seems obsessed with turning the nation’s capital into a veritable theme park of Trumpian grandiosity. It was from their long-awaited interview with Trump in March, just two weeks after the war with Iran commenced. She says that when Trump greeted the pair in the White House he wanted to talk first about the time he was spending on decor and monuments to himself— “sort of trying to make sure that people can’t take his name out of commission” after he eventually departs.
They moved to change the subject, to ask him about power, especially how he sees his own power.
“Do you know who Gary Player is?” Trump then asked.
They were puzzled, she said, because Player is a famous golfer. But Trump explained that Player had introduced him to a historian who’d come to the conclusion that Trump was the most powerful man “who has ever walked the Earth, more than Mao, Stalin, Hitler Napoleon, the Caesars,” etc. “These are the top ten.”
It turns out the “historian” was just a business associate and former caddie for Player. And what had struck them both was that there was “no moral assessment” of Trump’s standing at the top of the list, in the company of such feared men. It was just “about power and how it was being exercised.”
England’s (1834-1902) Lord Acton’s adage comes to mind: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
—tjc
