Trump’s Battle for Washington

The pool itself is a sight to behold. “Two thousand five hundred feet, the length of the tallest Building in the World,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in late April. The new paint job was supposed to be finished in a week at a fraction of the cost that had been expected, he boasted. It was a part of his broader effort to leave his mark on the nation’s capital—including the ballroom at the White House where the East Wing once stood and his proposed archway on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. As my colleague Michael Scherer recently wrote, Trump is “proud” of how he’s changed D.C.—often at the expense of national-park projects elsewhere across the country. But as April turned to May and May to June—and the pool turned from that deep, reflective blue to a gelatinous, algal green—it became an example of how the president’s tendency to move fast at the expense of procedure (and, at times, legality) can create new problems.What can Trump’s effort to make the bottom of a seven-and-a-half-acre pool the same blue that the 50 stars of the American flag rest upon tell us about how he has tried to refashion the nation’s capital? On Radio Atlantic, my colleague David Graham joins me to discuss.The following is a transcript of the episode:David Graham: I’ve often treated that as a kind of skeleton key to understanding Trump’s approach to things. He sees the splashy announcement as what matters. So, it’s a splashy announcement to say you’re gonna fix the Reflecting Pool, and you’re gonna have it looking great by the Fourth of July for the 250th celebration. It’s great to say you’re gonna go into Iran, you’re gonna, you know, topple the regime and bring democracy. Those announcements are easy