‘This is your money!’： Former Rep’s message to Americans as Trump spends big on vanity projects

The turmoil continues for President Trump's vanity projects, specifically for the now drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The president claimed in a social media post yesterday that the pool, quote, so badly damaged by deranged vandals, those capitalized, has been emptied as the massive slash gets repaired. This comes after his story on the size of the alleged gash keeps changing with no evidence to back up his claims. And to make matters worse, reporters sent to the empty pool say they have seen nothing to match Trump's allegations. In fact, a Washington Post analysis also finds the peeling of the lining was probably caused by application flaws. They use satellite imagery and everything to come up with that. The resources. Susan Wild, former Democratic congresswoman of Pennsylvania, is joining us, as well as Will Sommer, senior reporter at The Bulwark. As you can tell by the way I read that intro, this will this this story just delights me to to know. And why is the president of all the things that's happening? Why is he still blaming, quote, deranged vandals for doing something that anybody who watched what happened could have taught? This is what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, let's go back to the start of this. I mean, Joe Biden had this plan, an expensive plan to actually repair the reflecting pool. Repair it. Trump painted blue. Exactly. Trump comes in and says, we can do it a lot cheaper. We'll just paint it. Now, anyone who knows anything knows you can't just paint something to fix it. But they did it. And I think this is just a concrete example of Trump failing, you know, and that's why it's upsetting so much. He's had to invent this this whole alternate universe about, you know, the vandals with the giant knives or what have you. Congresswoman, the thing that this is a silly story that delights, but also there is a serious aspect to this, which is that the president of the United States and the lawyers under his tutelage have gone after people and charged at least one person with an actual crime. So you have this former Olympian who was walking by who apparently pulled that, as a lot of people did, because it was floating at the top, pulled off a piece of it. He is still charged at this point. It does not appear that those charges have been dropped. But talk about how you have a president who does focus on silly crap and then uses that focus and weaponizes it against his own people. It's really just amazing to that former Olympian who was charged and is still under arrest. It's not a funny story to him. And it's really affect, you know, things Trump does affect people's lives every single day. And the story fades and we stop thinking about it. But the person is still dealing with the repercussions of it. This reminds me, you know, every swimming pool owner in America with a backyard swimming pool is thinking to themselves, oh, this isn't the end of the story because, you know, it's just one repair after another with anything like that. But this is just classic Trump to to be focusing on, first of all, something like an alleged, you know, person who who cut a hole in the in the lining when we've got this war in Iran that's costing billions of dollars and lives and so forth. And the trivia, he can't the trivia is as important to him as the big picture. That's the really scary thing. I mean, usually presidents don't think about trivia. They have people that think about trivia. He doesn't. But he does. He loves us. He seems more obsessed with the trivial stuff than anything else. It's easier for him to grasp. Well, like if you read Regime Change, like there are so many stories, Laura, about the president focusing on basically remaking not just D.C., but the White House that Caroline Leavitt like caught him with like super glue, super gluing and applicating things around he loves this and he wants to leave his mark. He wants to be remembered beyond, you know, after he dies. We also know he's very obsessed with his mortality. And I think that that's part of why he's obsessed with these projects. But, Will, I do want to play this song for you, where the interior secretary was asked Secretary Burgum about their allegations of vandalism. Take a listen. Listen, it didn't peel off. There was there was there was vandalism. There was box box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There was people literally trying to destroy part of a monument. The reflecting pool is not just a pool on the mall. It is part of the Lincoln Memorial. And if anybody says that they're going to go and vandalize that, it's no it's no different than if someone was throwing. And you're 100 percent sure that what happened with the liner was vandalism. You can prove it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Burgum there is saying, yes, we can prove it. But this administration has a track record that once they go into court, their cases often fall apart. Well, I mean, look, they couldn't even get the story about the guy throwing the sandwich at the National Guard. They could get that indicted for a while. One thing that's worth mentioning here is they've had the FBI response team out looking at the pool. Now, could the FBI do they have a better use of their time? I would say so. And I think you're right that ultimately this thing is going to have a lot of trouble in court. I mean, this former Olympian is going to say, you know, my hand was dry or something along those lines. I mean, I think there's a lot of arguments that he could make or he could say, do y'all see a hole on the ground like we're all looking at the ground? I'm still there's no money. I can't get over it. Get over it. Secretary Burgum saying there weren't box cutters. You know how you have to dig, go down deep anyway, Congresswoman. He's not only messy. He the president isn't only messing with the reflecting pool and glue, super gluing gold applique is all over the Oval Office, turning into a Siegfried and Roy National Museum. But he's putting his face on a commemorative passport that you can get here at the passport. I'm getting to the coin in a minute. Go to the passport because people need to see this. It's a real thing where people his face is there on. There it is based on the on the passport. Now, let's show the gold coin he's putting his face on. And now just listen to the president talking about sharing his thoughts on being on the gold coin. This is from an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. Your face is now going to be on a coin, it looks like from the Treasury Department. Yes. What do you think about that? I was very honored. It's cute. It's not a bad picture, but it's very cute. They gave me a coin. That's very unusual from what I understand. A gold coin. I love the fake shock. Who? Me? I'm so honored. I can't believe they would do this for someone like me. I was very honored. Who could have thought? It's cute. Not a bad picture. Lord have mercy. Congresswoman, just hold forth. All I can say is, does he not understand how unpopular dollar coins are that everybody thinks are quarters? It's just going to be one of those relics of our past and no time at all. It says a lot about his- Narcissism? I don't know. Or his level of insecurity. Both. I mean, honestly. Big ego, low self-esteem. Maybe the two go together, but I can't even imagine, and then as we were just saying, to pretend to be honored by something that he's literally put into place himself. Right. It's ludicrous, and I have one thing to say to the taxpayers. This is your money. This is your money, not just the commemorative coin, but the nonsense with the reflecting pool- The ballroom. Everything else. The super glue he used to put something up in the White House. It's crazy, and people are struggling, and here we've got a president that's focused on this kind of thing, and it's just mind-boggling. And I argue he's doing it because he knows history will not be kind to him, so he wants to make sure that he is not forgotten before we forget. Right. A coin, a passport, the triumphal arch, his name on airports.