Reflecting on Trump’s bottomless pool of corruption

Donald Trump showed up at a Las Vegas rally on Wednesday night singing the same out-of-tune song he has belched out ever since he got his revenge over the Democrats in 2024 and clawed his way back into the White House. During that time, he has waged illegal wars, killed innocent people and committed war crimes against enemies real and imagined. 

Since his return Trump has consistently alienated and enraged U.S. allies while going out of his way to coddle and occasionally enrage nations more often viewed as enemies. Except for Iran, of course, which he alternately bombs, demonizes and flatters. He invaded Venezuela to serve  a warrant. He has ordered missile attacks on boats at sea without cause, evidence or due process. Hey, the crews have to stay sharp, right? 

Here at home, Trump has destroyed the East Wing, the South Lawn, the Kennedy Center and the Rose Garden, while crowding the city with young National Guard troops who have little or no desire to be there. Trump doesn’t care. Those men and women in uniform are just props used to exercise control so he can crow about how safe the city is. If he decides to call for martial law, he’ll conveniently already have boots on the ground in D.C. 

While preparing for the country’s planned celebration of its 250th birthday, Trump decided to do a little housecleaning and update the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, vowing  to make it better than ever. As usual with this guy, we got a lot less than he promised, though he continues to tell us how “big and beautiful” the pool is — or rather was, until “vandals” destroyed it. 

He issued a no-bid contract to a company that botched the renovation, according to staunch Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. That revelation came out only after former Olympic canoeist Jeff Hearn got hit with a felony charge, apparently for picking up a piece of the pool’s peeling paint from the renovation. 

Immediately after his arrest, Pirro and Trump claimed they had definitive proof Hearn had caused more than $1,000 in damage. He was then indicted. Only after that did Pirro bother to review the evidence and conclude the renovation was at fault.

(Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images) A piece of blue coating, still attached to the bottom, bobs in the water at the Reflecting Pool on June 21, 2026.

Wake up, kids: I’ve seen this behavior before.

When I was just a little boy, standing to my daddy’s knee, my pop took me to visit my Aunt Bill and Uncle Beverly on their farm outside Bardstown, Kentucky.

Yes, Aunt Bill and Uncle Beverly. I thought they’d gotten named backward when I first met them. They were great people and it was a great place to live. Their farmhouse was already old when I first saw it in 1966, complete with a chicken coop out back.

It also featured what we’d now call a “vintage” kitchen, featuring antique appliances. The end of the Great Depression was just 25 years in our rearview mirror, but the stains were still easily seen throughout rural Kentucky. 

A few minutes after I met Aunt Bill for the first time, she said something that struck me funny. I may have heard this expression before, but to this day, I hear Aunt Bill’s voice in my head saying, “Honey, quit running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” I heard that as I fled a pursuing bumblebee, with an emphasis on “quit” that sounded like a meat cleaver going through a chicken’s neck. 

I laughed trying to visualize what she said. The only thing I could think of was a Bugs Bunny cartoon. My parents assured me that Aunt Bill’s description was every bit as accurate as she was colorful. I refused to believe them, and must have been strident enough that my aunt asked my mom if she’d allow me to witness her prepare the chicken casserole she planned to serve that night. I was a bit suspicious of the use of the word “witness” instead of the more familiar “watch.”

What was this all about? I soon found out. My aunt took me out to the chicken coop and demonstrated, with a large cleaver, not only the origination of the saying but how one “prepared” an appropriately sized hen for the family dinner.

What I felt in that moment is exactly how I feel about American politics in 2026.You could make the argument that most of what passes for culture on this planet resembles a headless chicken spewing blood everywhere as it stumbles around aimlessly for a few minutes before falling over dead and becoming food for something else.

On the surface, things seem deceptively quiet, even normal, if you ignore the mass shootings, the war, the cyclosporiasis, the Trump “sports curse” and the hole that used to be the East Wing. Congress still meets. The president does whatever the hell he does. The Supreme Court hears cases. Wall Street keeps moving upward. Large media companies produce endless amounts of entertainment and news.

But look below the surface and you see a Supreme Court bought and sold to a cause that isn’t the Constitution. You see unending greed. Congress is paralyzed, brain-dead and greedy, a political zombie. 

Just consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his brain worm. 

The HHS secretary recently and proudly told a reporter he had no gag reflex. While that may explain his affiliation with Trump, Kennedy also said he could literally pick up anything dead along the side of the road and eat it. 

Once again, I have to circle around to the movie “Idiocracy.” I have previously compared Trump’s administration to the fictional world of that movie, while noting that it wasn’t supposed to be a documentary. In fact, I’ve made a huge error. The world “Idiocracy” is much less stupid than our reality. Remember that this president suggested treating COVID by injecting bleach. His two terms as president will likely serve as textbook examples of extreme government corruption. His name is destined to become a rude punchline or be completely forgotten. Either will do.

If there are still ratings to be gained from reporting on his nonsense, the corporate media will continuously keep doing that until a more profitable scandal comes along. 

Still, I must insist that the existential angst of the United States is much larger than Donald Trump, though we apparently love hearing about him. So does he, I assure you. Cheer him, mock him or despise him; he’ll be here all week, so try the veal. He thrives on the attention. 

Unless the Democrats win decisive control of both the House and the Senate this fall, or miraculously find a boatload of Trump supporters to vote for impeachment and convict him — and both seem unlikely — Trump will be president until he dies or his term ends. In  both cases, we can’t be sure he won’t stick around. If Mitch McConnell can disappear for weeks and still hold office, there’s nothing keeping Trump from doing the same. 

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Are we Rome after the empire has fallen? Would we even know it if we were? Many Romans didn’t know that at first. Will it take years to recognize our current situation for what it really is?

We have a president who does commercial breaks in his own public speeches for corporations that make him money. He loves insider trading, and engages in it based on decisions he makes as president. He should really be wearing a NASCAR jumpsuit with  his corporate sponsors displayed on his back and sleeves. Make it brilliant white, with gold piping and epaulets, and I guarantee he’d wear it.

There are no principles in this administration beyond the principle of making money. There are no values that can’t be counted in dollars. If you don’t like it, you get to meet the muscle. At least until we run out of bullets, or Pete Hegseth quits staring at himself longingly in his full-length mirror.

Just as the Reflecting Pool debacle exposes Trump, it also exposes the real existential threat to America. We have abandoned many of the ideals that founded the country. We exercise no caution. We don’t respect our institutions, even the good ones. Many ignore the Constitution. Some want to gut it. Some openly embrace bigotry, deny science, despise free enterprise and hate the contributions made by immigrants — one of the coolest aspects of our national narrative. 

We have literally and metaphorically tried to erase our actual history in favor of a mythical past that never existed — even in bad LSD trips.

What we’re left with is an intolerant society where might makes right, the ends justify the means and Anthony Fauci is thought to be guilty of corruption, greed and crimes against humanity, with no more evidence than was presented in the Reflecting Pool case. 

That case has a singular importance because it displays Trump’s heartless and vindictive nature over the smallest issues. Indict before you investigate. Threaten the world, including your own U.S. attorney when the corruption is exposed. Rinse and repeat. Keep lying about everything.

There’s no case against the canoeist. There’s no case against Fauci. We can’t trust Trump on anything. He runs around like a chicken with his head cut off, trying to avoid questions about Jeffrey Epstein, his long list of no-bid contracts, and a wealth of other misdeeds. The press and the public also have that headless-chicken quality, running about reporting and consuming the latest outrages, while missing the larger point: Our government doesn’t work when we are at cross purposes. Of course being headless chickens we can’t think much. 

In other words, we cannot deal with the problems we face if we can’t face the fact that we have created most of our problems. Until we do that, all I see is my Aunt Bill “preparing” the chicken for dinner. And we’re the chicken.