Trump's reflecting pool lie backfires

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0:31Brian Tyler Cohen:Trump issues a lie about the reflecting pool that he won't be able to validate. And I interview Senator Mark Warner about the new Iran deal. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So there is no world in which this latest lie by Trump regarding the reflecting pool does not blow up in his face. So he took it to social writing. The United States Park Police has arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our nation's magnificent reflecting pool. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of national monuments. Years in jail. Work will begin immediately on its repair.

1:04Brian Tyler Cohen:President DJT. So here's the deal. Trump royally screwed up by handing his pal a no-bid contract to fix the reflecting pool. That job was predictably botched. The pool filled up with algae five minutes after the gig was completed. And now Trump is embarrassed. So he needs an excuse. And the excuse he landed on was that elusive vandals have destroyed the reflecting pool. Because anything to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions. But here's the problem. There were no vandals that destroyed the reflecting pool. Which is why, despite Trump repeating this lie multiple times now, he's not done what he would have done if this was real, which is release video footage proving what he's saying.

1:46Brian Tyler Cohen:He posted again on True Social that vandals cut a 250-foot tear in the pool's lining. Now, the reflecting pool is obviously under constant surveillance. You think if a vandal made a gash in the lining nearly the length of a football field that Trump wouldn't release it to the public? So that Jesse Waters and Laura Ingraham and the rest of right-wing media could go on a non-stop tear about how the communist Marxist leftist Democrats want to sabotage poor, innocent Trump and our national monuments? So either Trump is conspicuously holding on to footage that would offer up undeniable proof of his story, or that footage doesn't exist and he's just full of shit.

2:27Brian Tyler Cohen:Take all the time you need with that one. Now, granted, that hasn't stopped the usual Trump sycophants from mindlessly regurgitating his claims anyway. Here, for example, is Tommy Lahren and Scott Jennings. Happening down there. Well, I'm not a scientist, so the algae thing, I mean, I believe that's what happens in bodies of water such as this. So I don't think this is President Trump's fault. But what's so irritating to me about the left here? President Trump is trying to make D.C. nicer. D.C. is filled with Democrats. OK, he's making it nicer because, yes, he happens to live there for the next couple of years.

2:59But you all live there all the time because D.C. is made up primarily of liberals and Democrats. Right. He's trying to make it nicer for you. He's trying to make it safer for you. He's trying to make your reflecting pool nicer. He's trying to spruce up the place and they go out of their way to damage and to vandalize it. It's like during the BLM Summer of Love when they're burning down businesses in their own community. It's like you have to be pretty stupid to do that. Well, regarding the vandalism, that's absolutely true. Somebody did vandalize the grass even when workers were working on the reflecting pool.

3:28I think I read that people came and vandalized their trucks and their equipment. Look, you have people that hate Donald Trump so much that they would go out and destroy our national monuments, vandalize the Lincoln Memorial, vandalize the grass. That's how broken-brained they are. Donald Trump has cleaned up Washington. The fountains work. The city is clean. The city is safe. It's good that he has taken an interest in this. And you have these people out here who are so broken-brained about the fact that he's the president, that they're spending their time vandalizing all this stuff. I think it's terrible.

3:57And I hope anybody who vandalizes our monuments, I hope they get caught. I hope they get put in jail. He's trying to make the city beautiful for America 250. There's going to be a lot of people in Washington. They deserve to go to a clean, safe capital. And that's what he's trying to do.

4:09Brian Tyler Cohen:There are no lengths that these people won't go to to debase themselves for Trump. Like they don't care if they torch every ounce of their reputations so long as they can align themselves with him on literally every single issue, no matter how stupid. And that's the thing. Like this is a stupid issue. And the only reason any of us are talking about it is because Trump dies on every hill and spent God knows how many weeks talking about his reflecting pool, his glorious reflecting pool. When in reality, this whole project became the perfect microcosm for his grift, corruption and lies. The reflecting pool is the perfect representation for how he has governed this country.

4:45Brian Tyler Cohen:He surrounded himself with the least qualified people on Earth who are loyal not to the Constitution, but to him, people who would be perfectly willing to not just allow his corruption, but encourage his corruption. And when that corruption inevitably made this country worse off, those people reflexively just blame the left. But here's the thing. It is not the left's fault that Trump launched a trade war that sent the cost of everything surging. It's not the left's fault that Trump started a war with Iran that sent energy costs skyrocketing. It's not the left's fault that Republicans gutted health care and food assistance.

5:17Brian Tyler Cohen:It's not the left's fault that inflation's risen 33 % since Joe Biden left office. Not the left's fault that the Epstein files still haven't been released. Just like it's not the left's fault that the reflecting pool project ended in disaster. The failures that we are seeing at the hands of the federal government are not a fluke. They are what happens when this White House is filled with sycophants who care more about blind allegiance to a serial liar and sexual predator than they do to the American people. So again, is the reflecting pool important? No. But the thing is, it is important to Trump, as are the rest of his vanity projects.

5:51Brian Tyler Cohen:The Ballroom, the Qatari Jet, the Rose Garden, the Marble and the Kennedy Center, the Triumphal arch. And because he's surrounded by sycophants, they too have to prostrate themselves to him by pretending that these things matter. And when even his little HGTV renovations fail, now they have to further debase themselves by parroting his lies about this bullshit on national TV in most occasions, while Americans watch along at our tax dollars being squandered by the absolute stupidest shit on God's green earth. If this tells us one lesson, it is that Trump and Republicans do not care about regular people.

6:27Brian Tyler Cohen:And clearly they're putting as much on full display right now. Next up is my interview with Senator Warner, but a reminder that my new book, The Day After, is now available for pre-order. So if you'd like to support my work, that is the best way to do so. And I'll also be on tour. So if you live in or around New York, DC or LA, I'd love to see you mid-July on the road. I'm going to put the link to both pre-order the book and tour tickets in the show notes of this episode. And again, I'd love for you to check that out. Okay, here's my interview with Senator Warner. No Lie is brought to you by Zbiotics.

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8:02Brian Tyler Cohen:Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash BTC and use the code BTC at checkout for 15 % off. I'm joined now by Senator Mark Warner. Senator, as we've seen the details of the Iran nuclear deal, this new Iran deal that Donald Trump has struck up start to emerge. Is there anything that would suggest that the United States has gained anything because of the last, you know, three, four months of this war that we've been engaged in? So, Brian, we've had now 110 days of Donald Trump's war of choice against Iran. and you know we've it's cost americans 60 billion roughly in increased gas prices that doesn't factor in increased fertilizer that'll pass on to food costs doesn't factor in you know airline tickets that have gone up a gazillion percent um 110 days in if you look did the administration accomplish anything of its goals is america stronger in any way and the answer is no.

9:07I mean, Donald Trump is a good salesman. We've got to grant him that. But even Donald Trump can't sell this pig in a poke. And if you just look, you know, the regime is worse. This agreement doesn't even allude to the missile capability that Iran still has, by the way. 60 % of the missiles, 50 % of the launchers. We didn't take out their drone. So the agreement doesn't even mention that. It doesn't mention Iran's support for the proxies like Hezbollah or Houthis. And if Iran is going to get beyond sanction relief that allows them to sell oil another$300 billion from somewhere, how much of that will end up with the Houthis?

9:56And the Strait of Hormuz is supposed to be any open, but at any point, the Iranian speedboats can put mines back in.

10:04Brian Tyler Cohen:Right. And then the whole notion that there's a concession because Iran said they're not going to develop a nuclear weapon. Well, that's been their freaking position for the last 15, 20 years. Right. And on top of that, just final point, I'll stop yammering on, but the idea that the Iranians are going to give up all their enriched uranium, the Iranians are going to give up their enriched uranium that is highly volatile in some of these canisters and some of these nuclear sites, In 60 days, I hope I'm proven wrong. But there is no one in the national security world, including some of the Trump senior officials, who believe that is possible.

10:43So even Donald Trump, I don't think, can sell this. This was a war of choice that was a folly to start with, and it will maybe go down as his single worst foreign policy endeavor, and that's considering a lot. Again, if I'm wrong, I would love to be wrong on this.

11:01Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, something interesting was even today when he was speaking in some bilateral meeting, he brought up this idea that because of the Obama nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, that Iran was given$1 .7 billion in cash. But he's saying this at the same time that his administration is negotiating a deal where Iran would have access to$300 billion. And so this is a deal 176 times better for Iran than the Obama deal would be. And I mean, talk about cognitive dissonance, him complaining about Obama while heaping so much more financial benefit onto Iran. Am I missing something? Or is it truly that –

12:14war. Now this other 300 billion, which is a little spooky where it's going to come from, no restrictions on that. And I just saw in my Republican friends, I said, like, you know, can I just use all the language you used to bash the shit out of, out of Obama on this deal? And the difference, you know, JCPOA was not perfect. Let me be the first to acknowledge that. But the irony was, as well as at that point, we had the whole world, we had the Europeans, us, and people forget Russia and China were signatories to try to hold Iran accountable. Now Russia and China are totally on Iran's side. So we have less enforcement mechanism, a worse deal for us, a better financial deal for Iran, both with the$300 billion and some of the immediate relief they've already gotten, but with other immediate sanctions relief starting, I think, this weekend.

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14:59Brian Tyler Cohen:See website for more details. Another point that I wanted to bring up was the impacts that this is having on America. It's not just the fact that Iran will have access to 300 billion new dollars. It's not just the fact that we went from Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khomeini. It's not just the fact that Iran can now basically toll the Strait of Hormuz, which allowed free passage beforehand. It's also the fact that, you know, you mentioned at the top that we've spent$60 billion. The administration had claimed$30 billion. I know that you had said$60 billion on increased gas prices. Does this not seem counterintuitive for an administration that beat its chest as focusing on America first, now spending ungodly sums of billions of dollars in yet another pointless war in the Middle East that they expressly swore they would avoid?

15:49Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, is this not money that could have and should have gone to Americans here at home? A freaking men. And yes, yes, yes, it could have gone, gosh, maybe healthcare, maybe education, maybe figuring out how we deal with AI. But let me just add one more thing on top of this. You know, you've got a big Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles, Southern California. We've got a big Iranian diaspora in Virginia. You know, Iranian culture, Persian culture is rich. It is an incredible group of human beings. The government has been awful. You know, the Iranian people in January in record numbers said, we're tired of this crap from the Ayatollahs.

16:33They were rising up. Donald Trump said at that point, don't worry, we got your back. We got your back. We'll be there. This memorandum of understanding, whatever it's called, not only doesn't talk at all about any change in Iran, it basically says we will respect the sovereign rights diplomatic speech, which is in a sense saying, all right, Iran, whatever your regime wants to do to the Iranian people, have at it. We will not mess with you at all. So all of those people that heard the American president say, rise up, the 30 ,000 plus that were killed between January and the war starting in February, how many more will be killed because now this brutal regime has got a green light that at least America doesn't give a damn?

17:27And I think about, again, the Iranian diaspora, which I know is torn. It's not right. It's not fair. It goes against who we are as a people. But if you're only looking for the deal a day, and on this one, again, even Donald Trump, I think, cannot sell this as a good deal for the region, for our allies, for Israel, for the Gulf states. I mean, Bill Cassidy, one of my Republican Senate friends, said it was the, I think the word for something like the greatest political folly or greatest disaster in modern history. It's just, that's not me. That's a Republican senator.

18:07Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. Last question here, and I know that you're out of time, but given the fact that he's getting bipartisan condemnation on this deal, Do you think that there's a world in which he's going to take this period where there's a ceasefire and before the official text has been released and renege on the deal to try and kind of save face? Yeah, but I don't know how he saves face. I mean, he's been so desperate for a deal. And let me – stepping back, if he wants to claim victory, claim victory. Continuing this war was not going to help America. It was not going to help prices. Frankly, it was not going to help the Iranian people.

18:41It was not going to help. You know, we have almost, we are running down on our missiles that we shoot off to shoot down the Iranian missiles. We use very expensive$2 million plus missiles to shoot down$50 ,000 drones at times. We had to end this. History will be the judge. And not just history. The American people will be the judge come November. But ending this is the right thing.

19:09Brian Tyler Cohen:We'll leave it there. Senator Warner, I appreciate your time. Brian, thank you as always.

19:41You