What the Reflecting Pool tells us about Trump’s presidency

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's been five months since the deadliest civilian strike of the U.S.-Israel war in Iran. 120 children killed at a school. Experts say the evidence indicates it was American forces that hit the school, but the U.S. government has not admitted responsibility. I'm Asma Khaled, and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. The BBC has now visited the site of the school and spoken to Iranians about what they saw. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Donald Trump is very used to getting his own way.

0:39He is accustomed to his orders being followed by loyal acolytes, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out, and that's how it's been going in the last few days. Some of his closest allies have had to tell him they can't give the president what he wants, and he is not happy about it. His flawed efforts to renovate the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial in the heart of Washington, D.C. has taken another bizarre twist as Washington's top prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, has been forced to drop the case and contradict Donald Trump's version of events. And I think it's fair to say the president is not happy about it.

1:16And I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. She folded like an umbrella and people get away with things. It's a disgrace. This is a rare example of one of Donald Trump's most loyal allies breaking ranks and telling him he can't have what he wants. Why is he making such a fuss about this reflecting pool? Does it show us that he's starting to lose his grip on the Justice Department and can't use it as his personal tool of revenge anymore? And if he won't accept the facts when they are presented to him with documentary evidence, what does this tell us about the whole of his presidency?

1:55Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump Arrangement Syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

2:26Hi, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Bureau in Washington. And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington, D.C. Yeah, it's good to be together. And we've got a great story to talk about today because, as you well know, Anthony, the Justice Department has dropped the charges against four people who were accused of vandalising the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial here in Washington, the one that was being refurbished by Donald Trump. Those people included an Olympic athlete, David Hearn, who was facing charges of vandalising the pool and three others who were facing misdemeanour charges.

2:59And this has become a real live story, hasn't it, Anthony? Because the charges were dropped by a real Trump loyalist who is now in a battle to try and save her job with the president. Right. Janine Pirro was a Fox News host for quite some time. She was a judge up in New York before that, but she got on Donald Trump's radar by hosting this kind of combative evening Fox commentary program. And he tapped her to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which is a key role because it prosecutes crimes in D.C., federal crimes in D.C., has a lot of discretion on what she picks and what she prosecutes.

3:39And she was brought in by Trump to be a hard-nosed person who was going to go after his enemies. This was a high-profile case because Donald Trump made it so. He had been talking about the reflecting pool and the renovations and how great it was going to be. And then it all kind of fell apart, and he was looking for someone to blame. And Jeanine Pirro, by bringing charges against her and others gave him that scapegoat to say this was vandals, these were liberals, and not this was just a botched job. The change is that now on Friday, Pirro came in and said it was because it was a rushed and botched job that the reflecting pool had been filled with algae, that it was peeling, and she dropped the charges.

4:20That did not make Donald Trump happy at all. No, that's right. She got public rebuke from the president when he was talking to reporters in the White House on Monday. Lafayette Park is a large park. It was known as the gateway to the White House. And it was disgusting. The monument is beautiful. Graffiti all over it. I won't say what was on the sidewalk, but horrible, horrible, horrible, disgusting stuff. And not only did we fix it, we have military standing there watching it. And if anybody touches it, that was the one mistake with the reflecting pond. They hadn't put up the cameras yet. They had enough up because you see what's happening.

4:59But if they would have had them up, it would have been a lot easier. And I was disappointed with Janine Bure, really disappointed with Janine Bure. She folded like an umbrella and people get away with things. It's a disgrace. He's still got a good turn of phrase, hasn't he? Folded like an umbrella. But let's go back to the beginning to explain why he is so upset and angry about it. The reflecting pool is this long channel of water, which is, I guess, what, three or four feet deep. But it stretches out from the Lincoln Memorial and it reflects the National Monument, the sort of needle in the centre of them all in Washington.

5:41Or it does sometimes. It's long had problems for decades before Donald Trump came into office. It had algae blooming in it and wasn't looking quite as beautiful as it might. And Trump decided he was going to tidy it up, not only as part of his long lasting legacy to Washington, but he wanted it done in time for the 4th of July this year for the 250th anniversary of the founding of America. Yeah, if you remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speeches delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking out on that reflecting pool or for younger folks, the movie Forrest Gump, if you remember, which recreated that scene.

6:14His girlfriend, Jenny, ran into the reflecting pool and he ran in as well and they hugged in the middle of it. So it has. How young do you think people have seen Fortis Gump are? Yeah, OK, maybe I'm dating myself with that, too. OK, that's the most recent pop culture reference that's on my radar. But anyway, it does have a symbolic place. And Donald Trump has focused on these symbols of Washington. He is a real estate developer by his past. He is always fixated on making things the biggest and the most beautiful. And since coming here, that has been something that he has really fixated on. Lafayette Park, which is across the street from the White House, which he talked about in the beginning of that clip.

6:55These bronze statues, the arts of war statues that sit on Memorial Bridge on the other side of the Lincoln Memorial have, I don't know if you've seen these pictures, they've been gilded. So now they are this blinding gold. The talk about building a triumphal arch on the other side of the Potomac River. all these fountains around Union Station, the train station and elsewhere in D.C. So the reflecting pool was just part of it. But it was one that he talked a lot about going into it, going into the Fourth of July celebrations. And now here we are. It was kind of a mess. You mentioned the algae. You mentioned the peeling.

7:30And that was one of the reasons why Trump decided to point the fingers at vandals as the explanation, because he did want to acknowledge the fact that one of his prized renovation projects ended up being a botched job. Yeah, he was really excited about this. That's one of the things he's talked about quite frequently, especially when he announced that he decided what color it was going to be. He was going to change the look of it. So this is him back in the spring talking about what his plans were going to be and how great he thought it was going to be. A great, beautiful blue color, American flag blue, as opposed to gray.

8:06right water's not gray but it's one of those things and instead of three and a half years instead of three and a half years it's one week so think of that one week so everybody say well yeah but you can't compare this yeah you can't it's much better it's a much better job this will last for at least 50 years and you'll never have a leak it's very strong you couldn't if you had a knife I don't want to give anybody the ideas. If you had a knife, you can't even cut it. So strong, so powerful, powerful rubber. It is beautiful, sealed. And I looked at just one of the little pieces that they did to finish.

8:46It's like a piece of glass, beautiful color, beautiful everything. You could never get any anything like that. So you can see why Donald Trump has become so defensive after that reflecting pool kind of fell apart. He had talked it up so much. I mean, this is really Trump created this own problem for himself by saying things like that and making the reflecting pool, which I think most Americans, yes, they may have seen Forrest Gump, they may know something about the reflecting pool. It's not on their radar as far as a big issue, but Trump made it so by saying these things and becoming so defensive when that big, beautiful, super strong reflecting pool ended up not being the case.

9:25And he went about doing it in a very Trumpian way, of course. He awarded a contract to people he knew who'd worked on swimming pools in his own golf properties before. Nobody else was allowed to bid on it, even though it was a federal contract. So after just days after it was reopened, firstly, there was more algae blooming across it than ever had been seen there before. So it was bright green, not American flag blue. And also this rubber seal, the base of it that had been put in that he claimed was so strong, you could never cut it with a knife, started falling to bits. And you could see pieces of it floating on the surface of this blue plastic liner.

10:01And that's when he decided that it was vandalism that had done this. It wasn't a botched installation job at all. It was definitely vandal. So even though we just heard him saying, you couldn't cut this with a knife, even if you tried to, that's when he said it happened, that somebody had cut a 350 foot gash in this pool, which would be quite a feat, actually, if you were going to try and do that. But that was the story about what had gone wrong with the pool. Right. And then after he said that, it was then that the Justice Department began releasing information about their investigations. They released videotape of what looked like some people kind of leaning over and maybe sticking their hands in the water.

10:39There's video of someone who did that being arrested by National Guard troops, detained by National Guard troops. And this was presented as evidence of the vandalism. And then that high profile felony charge against David Hearn, the former U.S. Olympian. And it was his case that led to Friday's developments where the charges were dropped against him because of the about face that Pirro underwent saying that this was a botched job, a botched renovation job and not any kind of example of vandalism. Yeah. But let's listen to Janine Pirro and the story she was telling last month when they were still sticking to this idea that it was vandalism, which, and remember, this is in complete contrast to her department filing charges at the end of last week saying it had nothing to do with vandalism.

11:31So listen to what she had to say in July. The evidence shows, and we will prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hearn willfully destroyed property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. This was a delivered act to damage the reflecting pool at the National Mall that members of the National Park Service actually have worked hard to restore and have witnessed. There was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool. And irrespective of whether or not, you know, we think that, you know, there is some situation that preceded it, we can state and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused damage, and that damage is over$1 ,000.

12:24With an expert. Come to the trial. It has to be drained. Well, she is backed away from that statement now. And the Hearn side is not happy at all. His lawyers have released a statement saying that dropping the charges is not enough. The Justice Department owes Mr. Hearn an apology. He had actually told the BBC that he didn't destroy, rip, tear, peel or remove any part of the paint. but he hasn't publicly commented since that Friday decision to drop charges. Yeah, and we've got this weird row now going on between Doug Burgum, who is the Interior Secretary, and Jeanine Pirro. So Friday, her department moved to drop the charges, saying that it is Interior Department documents that have shown them that it was a botched installation that was the problem, not vandalism.

13:16The next day, Doug Burgum says on X that vandals repeatedly damaged the site, that these acts were caught on camera and that his agency has been forthcoming with the Justice Department lawyers. So, I mean, he's directly contradicting what Jeanine Pirro is saying and appears to be directly contradicting the evidence his own department provided to Jeanine Pirro. So this is completely bizarre. Is it simply that people like Jeanine Pirro, when she was talking back in July, saying she had evidence of vandalism, Doug Burgum, still this weekend maintaining that he has evidence of vandalism, will say in public what they know the president wants to hear, regardless of the evidence that they might be able to see themselves?

13:57Trump clearly wants this to be vandalism. I mean, he was out there saying that from the very beginning for all the reasons that we've already discussed. So you could see why there would be a motivation among his aides, as there have been on other issues, to tell him what he wants to hear. All of this then, according to the New York Times, played out in the White House on Monday with Doug Burgum and Jeanine Pirro in front of Donald Trump arguing about whether this was or wasn't vandalism. Pirro apparently brought a box of documents that she presented to show that it wasn't vandalism, that it was the Interior Department's botched job that did it.

14:39Donald Trump still doesn't seem convinced by that. And he also seems much more angry at Pirro for publicly saying that all of these allegations of vandalism were wrong, rather than Burgum for handling what appears to be a faulty installation of this lining. Yes, because he is still maintaining, without the evidence, that this was vandalism. It's very Emperor's New Clothes going on here, isn't it? That nobody will tell Donald Trump either that he's naked or that his pool lining was absolutely useless. But we thought when we saw Janine Pirro going into the White House that she was going to be sacked because he had said already that afternoon that she had folded like an umbrella.

15:19He was obviously displeased with her. She and Doug Bergen both left the White House on Monday evening with their jobs intact for now, having had this row in front of the president, both clearly stating their cases and insisting that they were right. Can we read anything, Anthony, into the fact that they're both still in post for now? Well, they're both still there for now. But if we were thinking Piro's off the hook, just last night on the tarmac in Los Angeles, Trump was asked about Piro's fate. And this is what he had to say. And I told her I was not happy. Is she safe? Are you going to keep her in the position?

15:58I haven't made a determination. So a determination remains on Janine Pirro's fate, and we'll see what else comes out about this row, because it's always fascinating to see MAGA luminaries like these two going at each other over this kind of issue about loyalty to Trump and how loyal you are, even when it possibly means that you're going to have to embarrass yourself in court or at what point you have to turn around and try and tell the president he's wrong. And we're talking here about the reflecting pool, which has become quite symbolic of the way Donald Trump's running his administration, but fundamentally it doesn't matter that much.

16:35It is worrying, though, isn't it, Anthony, if you think that this is possibly the approach that's being taken to much, much bigger questions, including possibly the war with Iran, the situation with the Strait of Hormuz. If his own appointees could walk into the Oval Office and present boxes full of documentary evidence and the president isn't convinced by that because there's another story that he wants to believe, this is a deeply worrying situation. Right. This is bigger than just the reflecting pool, I think. And one of the things we've seen with Donald Trump and his aides is that he is willing to part ways with them if they don't vigorously endorse his views and pursue his agenda.

17:16And you remember Pam Bondi, the attorney general, who was also very loyal to Donald Trump. She got pushed out by Trump earlier this year because, according to reports, she wasn't prosecuting his enemies vigorously enough. You remember that post on True Social that apparently was supposed to be a private message to Pam Bondi, but it ended up going out to everyone where Trump said, Pam, you've got to go after people like James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York. And she didn't. She didn't do it in a way that Trump wanted. And so she was out. So here, this is another instance where someone in Donald Trump's Justice Department wasn't going full bore against people that Donald Trump wanted targeted.

18:01Now she definitely seems to be on tenuous ground, to say the least. One bit of good news, I suppose, for Donald Trump when it comes to his legal team around him is that the ever loyal Todd Blanch, his former personal lawyer who defended him in New York and some of those criminal cases there, probably is going to end up as confirmed as his attorney general. Right. It looks like it now. There was an impasse over the weekend. Another example of Donald Trump not getting what he wanted over a request by a handful of Republican senators that Blanche put in writing that this weaponization fund, the$1.8 billion as part of a settlement that Trump had with the IRS when they disclosed or a contractor disclosed his tax returns to the media that this the settlement was truly and fully dead, that this fund wouldn't happen.

18:50Trump and the White House was not willing to do that for days. In fact, Trump threatened to pull Blanche's nomination and keep him on in an acting role. On Sunday, however, Blanche produced the letters say no, that this fund is fully dead. The Republican senators then shifted to supporting his nomination. And now it looks like it is going to go to the floor of the Senate and he will probably be confirmed by a very narrow margin. But getting Donald Trump's former defense attorney into the top job in the Justice Department, someone who has carried water for Trump time and time again, I think that has to be an example of him getting what he wants, even if he had to once again kind of acknowledge the political reality there to make some concessions.

19:35Yeah, I mean, you can put an alternative case and say that he has been embarrassed over the reflecting pool and the fact that the Justice Department had to drop the charges. He had to drop the idea of this$1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund. He had to accept restrictions on where the IRS can do audits on him and his company's taxes. Some of the bigger ideas, might be one way of putting it, that Donald Trump has had, he has been forced to drop in the last few days. You could say it's not been a great time for Donald Trump as these schemes that maybe a few months ago he might have been able to get away with when he seemed to have more political clout.

20:12It's all falling to bits around him. Right. And all of these things, the Reflecting Poole, the Blanche nomination, these were issues that he could have taken care of if he hadn't been so obstinate, If he had been a little more low key about renovations in D.C., hadn't been bragging about him, if he had been willing to just let that one point eight billion dollar fund go and provide the written the written evidence asserting that he didn't do that. He decided to go full bore and he ran headlong into some brick walls. And if you want to expand it even more, he's kind of doing the same thing in Iran.

20:45He has been talking about how Iran is begging for a deal that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and that this war is going to be resolved with a clear American victory. And the facts on the ground, at least up until now, just haven't backed that up. Yeah. In the last few days, he's been saying again that we're very, very close to a deal. His Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, said that yesterday on Tuesday. And we wait and see. It's possible by the time AmeriCasters are listening to this, some sort of deal about the Strait of Hormuz may have been announced. But I think you're right, Anthony, that it saps away at his credibility.

21:18And that might sound like a strange thing to say because a lot of people who don't believe a great deal of things that Donald Trump says anyway. But it's our job, you and me, to take him seriously because he deals with very, very serious matters and work out when he is telling the truth, when he is telling us something that we ought to listen to. And that credibility is eaten away, isn't it, by the kind of things that we're talking about here. and the idea that he's got political luck and that he can make things happen has been shown not to be true over these other instances. So sitting here talking about reflecting pools and nominations and things, I think we can take two big takeaways from this.

21:53One, Donald Trump does not always accede to facts on the ground. He wants to make his alternative facts, which is that famous line from Kellyanne Conway in his first term, and has gotten away with that in the past, but maybe not so much now. And the other thing is that he is surrounded right now mostly by people who will tell him what he wants to hear. And the few that don't tell him what he wants to hear pay a price for it. And these things, you know, Donald Trump's going to be president for another two years. These things could greatly complicate the remaining two years of his terms if there isn't some sort of way of him addressing that and correcting it.

22:31So, with the great likelihood that Tom Blanche will shortly be the real attorney general, he's still the acting attorney general at the moment anyway, effectively running the Justice Department, does that make any difference with Trump's own personal lawyer in place, that he will be able to bring these prosecutions that others have failed to against Trump opponents he'll be under pressure to? Trump will be expecting him to do something on that. Right, and they clearly have a close relationship. I mean, that was one of the concerns that Democrats had as he was nominated for this top job in the Justice Department is that there's supposed to be there traditionally has been a firewall between the Justice Department and the president.

23:07But having the president's personal defense lawyer in the attorney general's job, if that firewall had already been eroded over the past year or so in Trump's second term, it is going to be virtually gone now. And Blanche coming in knows what Donald Trump wants. He wants him to go after his political enemies. He wants him to keep pushing ahead with the Comey prosecution and maybe to bring new charges against Letitia James. Adam Schiff, a senator from California, has also been one that Donald Trump once prosecuted. There's these investigations into the Federal Reserve and the renovations. Maybe that could be brought back up again.

23:42All of these things are going to be still clearly on Donald Trump's mind. And he is shown that he is more than willing to pick up the phone or get face to face with the attorney general and tell him or her to go after it. So this is something that Blanche is going to have to deal with and something that I think he knows coming into the job is going to be perhaps the biggest challenge for him. Yes, well, that's quite something for Todd Blanche to have to try and cope with. Be careful what you wish for. I think sometimes maybe he might regret becoming confirmed as the attorney general. We shall see.

24:18But anyway, with that, we should probably leave it there. Bye-bye. Bye, y 'all.

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25:24has not admitted responsibility. I'm Asma Khaled, and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. The BBC has now visited the site of the school and spoken to Iranians about what they saw. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.