In this edition of #ListenFirstFriday, the 17-year-old founder of YAP Politics discusses efforts to bridge the polarizations between political affiliations.
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U.S. President Donald Trump displays a graph entitled "Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers" as he speaks on his renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on June 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/TNS)
Trump’s second term is a murky, embarrassing and costly spectacle
Jun 27, 2026
Every time I get asked by a TV anchor what I think about the drama of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, my favorite “historical” headline from the Onion comes to mind: “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg.”
And every time I do, I hear from defenders of the Trump administration complaining about the disproportionate media coverage of what should be a very minor story in the grand sweep of things. They have a point. President Trump has done some good work rehabbing Washington, D.C., where I live. But the Reflecting Pool has bedeviled him. Algae keep returning to the pool, despite the administration’s best efforts, and attempts to remedy the problem have yielded further problems.
I can think of scores of stories that deserve more attention on the merits.
But there are two problems with this complaint. First, it was Trump who invited extensive scrutiny of the effort. “I’m very proud of it,” he said before the algae counteroffensive. “I’m very good at building things and constructing things, so I hope you go take a look at it.”
Second, there’s the metaphor-on-the-Mall problem. The Reflecting Pool is a microcosm of nearly everything that vexes people about the second Trump term. We can start with his decision to ignore the usual rules and procedures to give a no-bid job to a contractor for the repair and paint work. Trump said it would cost $1.8 million. The costs have grown nearly tenfold. To deal with the insurrectionist algae, he gave another no-bid job to a Mar-a-Lago crony, campaign donor and convicted felon who looks like a villain from the old Dick Tracy comic strip.
The man who vowed to “drain the swamp” of D.C.’s corrupt cronyism used figurative swampy means to deliver literal swampy ends.
Another familiar aspect of the pool fiasco: A project Trump touted as proof of his genius and expertise becomes proof of unpatriotic enemies undermining him when it flounders. Without any evidence, Trump claimed that the only reason the Reflecting Pool’s paint is peeling and algae blooming is because anti-American “vandals” sabotaged it with a “300-foot long gash.”
How vandals evaded park police, security cameras and his own National Guard deployment remains unknown. Never mind how they put a 300-foot gash in a paint job Trump described as “So very strong. You couldn’t, if you had a knife — I don’t want to give anybody ideas — if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it. So strong, so powerful.”
But the metaphorical meaning of the miasma on the Mall hardly ends there.
During a May 27 Cabinet meeting, Trump boasted at length about the Reflecting Pool job and then handed the meeting off to his secretary of Defense. “I think, actually, your efforts on the Reflecting Pool are actually a great segue,” Pete Hegseth said.
“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people,” Hegseth gushed. “And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged … there’s only one man, over the course of both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”
As with so much Hegseth says, this is not exactly true. Every president since Bill Clinton has said that a nuclear Iran was unacceptable. It’s true that Trump is the only president to use massive military force in the name of preventing it. Whether his efforts have made the “never” claim a reality is, at best, an open question.
What isn’t an open question: Trump’s unilateral Iranian adventure did not go as planned. What began as another example of Trump trying to will into existence the reality he wanted segued into a murky, embarrassing and costly spectacle with no satisfying end in sight. Talk about metaphors.
That’s because, as the saying goes, the enemy gets a vote. Trump can bypass or ignore many laws, but not the law of unintended consequences. The defining feature of Trump’s presidency is his unvanquishable belief that laws, rules and norms are impediments to his will and genius.
He expects, nay demands, Hegseth-like sycophancy and praise recognizing that alleged genius. And when events conspire against Trump, the fault must lie in vandals and lies from “fake news.”
The international order, like the domestic order, is not natural. They are more like a man-made garden constructed out of the wilderness of the human condition. When the garden is not maintained, when the rules go ignored, the jungle grows back. Just like the algae.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Kids and families celebrate the US Bicentennial near the New York Harbor in Lower Manhattan. Taken on July 4, 1976 in New York City, New York.
(Photo by David Attie/Getty Images.)
July 4th and the American Faith We’ve Watched Slip Away
Jun 20, 2026
I was a girl in Philadelphia in the summer when America turned 200. The birthplace of America was electric in a way I've never forgotten — crowds stretching from the art museum steps down to the Delaware River, each city block corded off for parades, cookouts, celebrations, and the kind of noise that felt like belonging.
It was also, I know now, a particular kind of American moment — one that required something beyond good weather and a long weekend. It required a belief that the country and its highest office still belonged to all of us.
Back in 1976, we were not, by any measure, a country at ease. Unemployment hovered near 7.5 percent. Inflation had only recently retreated from double digits. The man who'd held the presidency before Gerald Ford had resigned in disgrace two years earlier.
We had every reason to feel hollowed out. And yet. There was something unbroken in that crowd. Whatever people thought of their government, and plenty thought very little of it, they believed the country was still theirs.
That feeling had a name. It was civic trust, the quiet, background assumption that whatever failures or corruptions touched the men in office, the office itself still pointed toward something larger than any one man's ambition.
On the eve of this Fourth of July, I find myself back in that memory, and I cannot shake the distance between then and now.
The surface numbers are, in some ways, better than in 1976. Unemployment currently sits at around 4.2 percent. Inflation, while persistent, is nowhere near the double-digit nightmare of the late seventies.
But numbers have never been the whole story, and this year the story underneath is one I don't know how to celebrate around.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump's personal wealth has grown by at least $1.4 billion. He accepted a Boeing 747 worth roughly $400 million from the Qatari government. He launched a cryptocurrency venture that, according to a House Judiciary Committee report, generated as much as $11.6 billion in holdings — while his administration was quietly dismantling federal oversight of the industry.
And then, last month, he did something that may be without precedent in the history of American self-dealing. Trump sued his own Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the unauthorized release of his tax returns — and then, before the case could even be heard on the merits, his Justice Department settled it on his behalf.
The price of settlement: a Department of Justice (DOJ) addendum declaring the federal government “forever barred and precluded” from auditing any tax return filed by Trump, his sons, his family, or more than 500 affiliated business entities before May 18, 2026.
An ongoing IRS audit that could have resulted in a $100 million penalty against the Trump Organization simply vanished. Legal experts called it unprecedented. Senate Democrats called it a potential violation of federal law.
When asked about his family's financial entanglements, Trump told the New York Times: “I found out nobody cared, and I'm allowed to.”
In 1976, that sentence would have ended a presidency. It ended one —in fact, just two years before—though the crime was different.
What Richard Nixon understood, to his ruin, was that there were still lines. That the office did not belong to the man who held it. Gerald Ford, whatever his failures, knew this. Jimmy Carter, who would take the oath six months after that Philadelphia summer, put his peanut farm in a blind trust.
The question of self-dealing was essentially rhetorical, because the expectation that a president served the country — not himself — was foundational.
What's been taken from us isn't a policy position. It's not something the next election can simply restore, though elections still matter enormously.
What's been taken is the assumption of good faith — the idea, however naïve it may now seem, that the person holding the most powerful office on earth was pointed, even imperfectly, toward the public good rather than his own balance sheet.
The fireworks will still go up on the 250th birthday. Family, friends, and neighbors will gather. There will be plenty of flags flying.
But I keep thinking about that girl in Philadelphia, pressed into a crowd of strangers who all felt, despite everything, like they were celebrating something they shared.
I'm not sure I know what we share now, except, perhaps, the grief of knowing what we've lost, and the long work of getting it back.
Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master's of science in political science as well as a bachelor's of science in nursing.
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A pro-Trump mob enters the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.
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MAGA’s Get Out of Jail Free Card
Jun 16, 2026
We have never lived through a better era to be a criminal, provided your political fealty is directed toward the right person. If you are an executive facing fraud charges or a perpetrator of violent offenses, the standard calculations of the penal code may no longer apply as long as you support Donald Trump. If you’re Team Trump, the machinery of the state will actively dismantle itself to protect you. If not, good luck to you.
The Trump regime’s message is now unmistakable: rules do not apply to MAGA. Consider the recent saga of the U.S. Army pilots who took two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters on an unauthorized detour to perform a low-altitude flyby of washed-up rocker and MAGA ally Kid Rock’s Nashville home. As a former military helicopter pilot and aircraft commander, let me be clear: this is exactly the kind of stunt we are taught never to do. If I had pulled something like that, there would have been legitimate grounds to take my wings away. Instead, when the Army suspended the crew pending a standard safety and regulatory review, as is the proper procedure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth intervened personally, bypassing standard military discipline to announce on X: “Thank you @KidRock. @USArmy pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.” Their rule breaking was catalogued as patriotic.
Trump has consistently used the power of his office to protect his ideological allies. By issuing pardons to those who attacked the Capitol and attempting to institute a multi-billion-dollar weaponization slush fund to pay out reparations to insurrectionists and other political loyalists, Trump’s dog whistle sounds like an invitation to commit future crimes in his name. The presidential pardon power, historically preserved as a tool for mercy and the correction of systemic judicial errors, has been converted into a personalized tool of patronage.
Trump hardly seems to care who he pardons as long as he believes them to be an ally. For instance, when asked why he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a man convicted for money-laundering violations that helped terrorists and other criminals, Trump replied: “I don’t know. He was recommended...” In fact, Zhao helped Trump launch his own stablecoin. This cavalier approach to forgiving his favorite criminals is feckless and reckless. One pardoned January 6th rioter has already gone on to molest two children whom he then attempted to silence with promised hush money that “he [hoped] to get from [the] slush fund.” Another was given a job at the Pentagon.
While this regime systematically insulates its allies, it is concurrently manufacturing new categories of criminality to target perceived enemies. Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), veiled as countering domestic terrorism, Trump has weaponized federal law enforcement infrastructure with overbroad powers to go after civil society groups, nonprofits, donors, activists, and even “leftist influencers.” With Trump in charge, the wealthy and well-connected are routinely let off the hook while actual victims of the system find no such reprieve; now, those resisting Trump are all the more likely to become victims, too. As true criminal justice reform is frozen out, ordinary defendants will face the full, unyielding weight of the legal meat grinder.
Competence and adherence to the law have been replaced by compliance. President Kennedy’s famous Inaugural quote could be rewritten: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Donald Trump personally. Cabinet meetings have famously assumed a cult-like quality, where members rotate kissing up to Trump in such excess that the New York Times found that at least one in every six sentences offered him flattering praise. As MS NOW wrote, “Somewhere, Kim Jong-un could be heard saying, ‘Jeez, I think you guys are overdoing it a bit.’” Whether in North Korea or in the United States, replacing experts with sycophants at the highest levels of leadership leads to terrible consequences.
Trump is gifting appointments to his unqualified cronies at the expense of our national security. Secretary Lutnick (who engaged in intimate business deals with Epstein years after Epstein’s first conviction, planned family vacations to his private island, and lied about it) has connections to the stablecoin Tether, the primary vehicle Russian oligarchs use to move sanctioned Iranian oil to China. Secretary Hegseth breached security protocol in his second month on the job and is committing war crimes around the globe.
Now, take William J. Pulte, a real estate heir with a history of using his position at a federal mortgage agency to make criminal fraud referrals against Trump’s political adversaries. The man has zero national security, military, or traditional intelligence experience, yet Trump named him Acting Director of National Intelligence, where he will oversee a network of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the NSA. Even Republicans revolted over the choice, forcing Trump to quickly nominate a permanent replacement, but Pulte holds the role until Trump’s new pick, Jay Clayton, is confirmed by the Senate. Clayton, naturally, has appeared on CNBC several times to argue on Trump’s behalf, even defending the slush fund. I’m a veteran Navy pilot who used to get regular intel briefings; I understand the necessity of experience in this role. The idea that either of these bootlicking hacks will serve as the principal adviser on intelligence issues—for any amount of time—is insulting and incredibly irresponsible.
This dangerous loyaltocracy may have culminated in the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General. Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer, has openly stated that the president has a right and duty to direct the DOJ to target specific individuals, shattering the post-Watergate norm of an independent, impartial justice department. He also recently said at a press conference, “I love working for President Trump. It's the greatest honor of a lifetime…[If he] asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much - I love you, sir.” Public declarations of love to the President may get you a Cabinet position these days, but if the nation’s top law enforcement official is operating under a mandate of total personal fealty, “equal justice under law” has become a dead letter.
Trump’s favor is the new golden ticket. Praise the administration and even lawbreaking may be overlooked with a “carry on, patriot,” a pardon, a promotion, or an appointment to high office. If you criticize Trump, however, your First Amendment-protected speech could be labeled domestic terrorism, and the federal government may be instructed to prosecute you. These are high stakes. When the law becomes an asymmetric weapon, it ceases to be law at all—and our democracy starts looking a lot more like an autocracy. So, call your reps, demand accountability, and don’t stop advocating for justice. But also, make sure you’re writing everything down. One day, there will be legal proceedings on these matters. Be ready to testify.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
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A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.