Trump’s Latest Attempt to Defy Reality

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.President Trump spent the weekend trying to calm the waters in Washington and roil them in the Persian Gulf.Let’s begin with the less serious of these two self-inflicted crises. This spring, Trump for some reason became fixated on the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, which had not previously been a topic of national discussion, but which he believes should vibrate with a deep Technicolor blue. The administration awarded no-bid contracts for both a color coating and a new water-purification system, with the latter going to a company tied to a Trump-campaign donor previously convicted of conspiracy to bribe. Surprising no one, both parts of the project have been a disaster. As my colleague Matt Viser has vividly reported, the pool is beset with algae, and the blue coating is coming off in big chunks.Now Trump says water will likely have to be removed from the pool to do “necessary repairs”—in other words, $16.4 million in taxpayer money will go down the drain. (Credit where it’s due, though: This may become the first time Trump will have actually drained a swamp.) He also blamed vandals for the issues, though the White House has offered no evidence to suggest that’s true. Visitors who approached the pool this weekend were shooed away by National Guard members, and at least one who touched the pool’s broken liner was arrested; he denies doing any damage. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, promised to throw the book at vandals, which mostly seems like a good way for her to extend her record of failing to get D.C. grand juries to green-light tenuous prosecutions.Meanwhile, Trump nearly upended peace negotiations between Vice President Vance and Iranian leaders in Switzerland. Over the weekend, Iran claimed it had once more blocked the Strait of Hormuz because