The word “narcissist” comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, which tells the story of a young man so enamored of his image in a reflecting pool that he is unable to look away. He eventually dies from his own egotism and turns into a flower.
Donald Trump is no doubt ignorant of this story, even as he loves to imagine himself connected to the glories of antiquity, so it’s fitting that he is reenacting the tale from Ovid’s poetry as a distorted, expensive farce. Like the mythical figure who gave name to Trump’s most prominent personality flaw, the president became fixated on the famous Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, hoping to repaint it so that it mirrored his imagined brilliance. Instead, the algae-ridden water has turned into an on-the-nose metaphor for his own decrepitude, as tourists have begun swarming it so they can mock this totem of Trump’s failures.
The same man who threatened to sue and ban comedians for satirizing him is now overseeing an effort to falsely accuse people of “vandalism” as a pretext to cuff them for laughing at his Reflecting Pool calamity.
The president, whose thin skin is not protected by his ever-thicker makeup, is not taking the taunting well. The same man who threatened to sue and ban comedians for satirizing him is now overseeing an effort to falsely accuse people of “vandalism” as a pretext to cuff them for laughing at his Reflecting Pool calamity. Trump has gone hard on the “vandalism” conspiracy theory in recent days, telling reporters in a breathless tone on Monday that someone took a “box cutter” and “start[ed] hacking it up,” somehow putting “a 300-foot long gash” in the pool. The tale contradicts comments he made to reporters on May 4, when he bragged that the new lining was “very strong” and “if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it.”
Although such an act would require blade skills beyond even the greatest of samurai, federal authorities have arrested five people. Notably, most of their names are being held back. The one arrestee who has spoken to the press, three-time Olympian David Hearn, said he was just touching the blue paint that had peeled off, a story that seems far more likely than magical antifa ninjas with box cutters. Jonathan Karl of ABC News did a segment where he touched the paint floating in the water, showing that the peeling appears to be the result of shoddy work. In response, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — and former Fox News host — Jeanine Pirro implied in an interview with Peter Doocy, one of the network’s anchors, that she might arrest Karl on vandalism charges. Her comments echo those of Trump, who threatened to sue ABC News for reporting on the pool repairs falling apart within a few days of being finished.
On Tuesday, TMZ posted a video of workers putting up fencing around the pool, ostensibly to protect it from vandals. In reality, the structure is likely intended to keep more tourists from taking pictures and cracking jokes about the peeling paint.
The “vandals did it” conspiracy theory is painfully stupid, but that hasn’t prevented widespread uptake among Republican politicians and GOP voters. Rep. Tim Moore, R-N.C., released a video baselessly accusing “politically motivated” actors of putting fertilizer in the water. (Experts have blamed the algae on the choice of a paint, which was apparently chosen without any environmental review.) Fox News dutifully started demonizing Hearn with stories about his “ties” to a “Dem fundraising giant,” which turned out to be 15 donations ranging from $10-$100 over the past two decades to ActBlue and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
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In both Truth Social posts and conservative media comment sections, stories are brimming with the MAGA faithful claiming belief in the “vandals” conspiracy theory, with comments ranging from, “Even if you don’t like the current president, you can’t just vandalize the white house property!” to “Lock them up with no trial and keep them in the DC jail for as long as possible.” Some even threw together memes, such as one showing the damage and insisting it’s “sabotage,” which could come with a 10-year prison sentence.
Do these people believe this silly lie? With MAGA, it’s always hard to distinguish the line between self-serving tales and genuine delusion. Ultimately, it’s irrelevant: What matters more is why right-wingers are burrowing so deeply into this nonsense. Like Trump, they want an excuse to arrest people for laughing at them. It really isn’t deeper than that. Just as Trump is too egotistical to admit he screwed up the iconic Reflecting Pool, his followers cannot stomach admitting liberals were right all along about how stupid it was to vote for him.
The whole debacle is another blunt reminder that fascism is a movement for people who would rather blame everyone or everything else — including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; the word “woke;” antifa; Obama; Hillary Clinton and three-time Olympians — for their failures than do the hard work of improving themselves and their country. This is evident in the clown car that is Trump’s Cabinet, which is stuffed full of members like Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel — people who would never succeed on their own terms, but have been able to ride the wave of conservative resentment into positions they’re not qualified for. But it’s also true of the everyday MAGA voters that fall for these politics, and constantly vote against their economic self-interest just to stick it to those smarty-pants liberals with their annoying competence.
As the Defector’s David Roth wrote, Trump’s appeal to his MAGA supporters is his repeated insistence that he’s “the man who knows more about every subject than any expert without even having to study or even pay attention to any of it.” Never mind that it’s not true, but preposterous. There’s a lot of power in that fantasy for his base, so much so that there is no way they can ever admit that Trump did a bad job on the Reflecting Pool because it’s such a stark symbol of how he really can’t do anything right.
The pool isn’t the only hilarious reminder this week that Trump’s incompetence is only equaled by his narcissism. After his name was removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts under a federal judge’s orders, workers hung a tarp so the public could not see the building in its restored state. It’s very much like the fence around the Reflecting Pool, which also serves to hide Trump’s shame. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who first sued to get the president’s name removed from the center, has filed another motion to force the tarp’s removal. In it, she accuses the White House of “willfully sabotaging” the Kennedy Center “to assuage Defendants’ vanity or massage broken egos.”
On the “Pod Save America” podcast, New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan explained that Trump “views himself, and is trying to create for himself, as a capital-G ‘great man of history,’ as a sort of Napoleonic figure.” The president even handed Swan and his colleague Maggie Haberman a two-page document, which he attributed to a “presidential historian,” that claims he is a more important historical figure than Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler or Julius Casear. It was actually written by Dave King, a golf caddy for Trump’s friend Gary Player.
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Trump’s motivations aren’t mysterious. He’s slapping his name on other people’s accomplishments and trying to claim credit. Being solely focused on getting attention, he cannot distinguish between those remembered fondly and those, like Hitler, who murdered millions. All that matters is trying to obscure that the only thing he’ll be remembered for is his corruption, criminality and utter inability to accomplish much of anything of note. He even held an Oval Office press availability earlier this month where he held up a graphic showing the Reflecting Pool next to the World Trade Center and Empire State Building, and bearing the caption “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.” But of course, it’s not his pool. It was finished in 1922, and designed by Henry Bacon.
Most people would be embarrassed to be associated with such a silly fraud, but the MAGA base keeps eating this up. Trump is the president for every C student who blames “affirmative action” for not getting into a better school. He’s the champion for fifth-place swimmers who point the finger at trans athletes when they didn’t do better themselves. For failed sons who whine about Black and female officers because they didn’t rise higher in the military ranks. Of course they will delude themselves into believing “vandals” broke the pool Trump obviously messed up. The alternative is to look at their own reflections — and they wouldn’t like what they would see.
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