Yglesias: The fact that Trump drained the Reflecting Pool, repainted it, and then bragged that he’d solved an algae problem that has plagued the National Park Service for decades only to discover that he actually didn’t solve it at all is not important. But it is a potent metaphor for much of his administration — notably the war with Iran, which played out on a parallel timeline and similarly ended with Trump discovering that he in fact could not secure a better deal than the one the Obama administration had already bequeathed to him.
But in typical Trump fashion, he didn’t just say something like, “I tried but it didn’t work and now the question is whether Congress wants to appropriate money for a very expensive rebuild of the filtration system or if everyone should just learn to live with algae.” He’s gone off on a whole insane binge of lying about the situation, arresting people for touching the water, and so forth. Meanwhile, you have center-right people complaining that the media is too obsessed with the Reflecting Pool when it doesn’t matter. To which I say: Sure. But Trump made a huge deal out of this and now wants to wriggle out of talking about it because it’s an embarrassing failure, which is not only Trump’s approach to Iran but also the whole conservative movement’s approach to Trump!
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