Trump's Reflecting Cesspool mirrors a much more festering mess

As Iran festered and inflation rose earlier this month, Donald Trump talked about a far more urgent matter. The Reflecting Pool.It’s inexplicable why Trump pays so much attention to his ballroom, his arch and the Reflecting Pool. Maybe, as he watches his approval ratings plummet to historic lows, he is turning to real estate since he thinks that’s the only thing he was ever good at.He wasn’t, of course.Using a chart he’d had prepared for the occasion, Trump compared the scale of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the height of three famous buildings. The chart had an absolutely ridiculous and childish title, “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.” And for the rumored size-challenged Trump, brilliantly depicted in South Park, it seemed like a desperate attempt to heighten his manhood.Trump announced that the final coat of protective seal had been applied, completing the repairs in preparation for the nation’s 250th birthday. Happy birthday, America! The whole country, we were told, should be beside itself with exhilaration about the Reflecting Pool paint job.There was just one small problem. By the weekend, the pool was green again.Days after the basin was refilled in its new “American Flag Blue,” algae bloomed across the surface, turning the reflection of the Lincoln Memorial into a mossy swamp. Interior Department officials insisted this was merely “residual algae” left over from supply lines that had sat dormant during construction, and that nanobubblers would soon keep things pristine.National Park Service workers were photographed wading in with hand tools to scoop it out but, by the next morning, the green was back.The renovation, which Trump originally said would cost 1.5 to 2 million and take about a week, instead took six weeks and ran to 14.2 million, awarded through a no-bid contract to a firm that had previously done work at one of Trump’s golf clubs.According to the New York Times, the renovation is largely cosmetic. The crumbling underground pipes that actually circulate and filter the water, which has been a documented problem for decades, remain untouched.The basin may be freshly sealed and painted American Flag Blue but the infrastructure underneath is still rotting, which means all that slime will keep coming back.Which brings us to Bill Pulte.Trump’s plan was to install Pulte, the 38-year-old director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a man with zero, zilch, intelligence experience whatsoever, as acting Director of National Intelligence, handing him oversight of the CIA, the NSA, and 16 other agencies that form the backbone of American national security.If the Reflecting Pool is Trump’s favorite metaphor for shining restoration, Pulte is its antithesis, a dark mirror.Pulte didn’t build his thin résumé and questionable reputation by fixing things. He built it by digging. At FHFA, his signature move was using access to vast mortgage records to excavate dirt on Trump’s political enemies and refer them for prosecution, turning a boring regulatory backwater into an opposition research shop for his real estate crony in chief.Most people had barely heard of the guy until he turned up as the wacko behind that infamous AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like healer, the one Trump gleefully posted to Truth Social.The plan was to seat Pulte on June 19, even before Tulsi Gabbard’s official departure. It set off a bipartisan revolt.Lawmakers from both parties balked at handing the nation’s entire intelligence apparatus to a mobile-home-park financier with no background in the field, and Democrats made clear they wouldn’t support renewing Section 702 of FISA, one of the country’s core surveillance tools, while Pulte was anywhere near the job.Facing the fallout, Trump did what Trump does. He TACOed. Trump announced he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC chairman, and Trump loyalist and toady, as the permanent Director of National Intelligence.The Senate was to confirm him at lightning speed, circumventing Pulte’s acting duties. Pulte, it turns out, eroded faster than the Reflecting Pool pipes.But Trump, on a whim, impulse and switch-a-roo, decided to stall Clayton’s confirmation Wednesday to compel Congress to pass the SAVE America voter ID bill and to force the renewal of FISA Section 702.Furthermore, Trump seeks to keep Clayton in his current SDNY role until his successor is confirmed, while accusing Democrats of reneging on a deal regarding surveillance programs.So, what this means is that Pulte will now be allowed to run amok, because the SAVE bill has no chance of passing in the Senate.Gabbard already hollowed out the intelligence community, pushing out veteran analysts and draining institutional knowledge on her way out the door, so it’s hard to even imagine just how devious Pulte will be while Clayton waits his turn — if he ever gets it.Our adversaries, Russia, China, Iran, no doubt saw the gaping holes Pulte’s ineptitude will open up, regardless of how temporary the appointment might have been. And our allies see Pulte approaching and questioning just how safe the intelligence they provide to the U.S. will be.But Trump couldn’t care less about any of that, which is why he’s still focused on the simpleton stuff. Like the Reflecting Pool. It may look clean again by July 4th, but who cares in the whole scheme of things?Yes, the surface may gleam in the summer sun as fireworks light up the sky over the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the 250th. But the pipes underneath will still be cracked. And the algae will still accumulate.And in the halls of the intelligence agencies Pulte is now destined to control, the damage to those leaky pipes is far more ominous.