MY Columns

Has anybody seen POTUS? Look in the dumpster!

Exclusive! Conversation overheard two nights ago in the White House.

Susie Wiles: Has anybody seen the president?

Natalie Harp: Nope, I haven't seen him for an hour. Which, for me, is rare.

Marco Rubio: Have you tried the dumpster out back? He likes to hide out there sometimes. Or that porta potty by the ballroom?

Susie Wiles: No, I've looked everywhere. He must be playing hide-and-seek again.

OK, that never happened. But we now know that Trump played an even bigger game of hide-and-seek on July 8, when leaving the NATO summit in Turkey - a dangerous game that raises serious concerns about the safety of the president and many others. And, like everything else Trump does, it was done in a fog of lies.

Here's how it unfolded. Trump flew to Ankara on the new Air Force One, a gift from the government of Qatar. But, upon arriving at the airport for departure, the White House announced that Trump would be flying out of Turkey, instead, on the old, legacy Air Force One. Because, Trump said, he wanted to send the Qatari jet to Mildenhall Air Force base in England so troops would have a "chance to tour the aircraft." Lie Number One.

Trump then mounted the stairs to old Air Force One, gave the customary wave, and walked inside. Reporters and other officials on board were told to lower their window shades for take-off, ostensibly with the president still on board. Lie Number Two.

Reporters were surprised when Trump didn't visit the press cabin during the flight. No wonder. He wasn't on the plane! Because, once the shades were lowered so nobody could see what was happening, Trump had been secretly spirited out of Air Force One into the back of a catering truck and driven to a nearby Air Force cargo plane, or AFC-32A. Lie Number Three.

Then, once all three planes arrived at Mildenhall, Trump, who'd been stealthily returned to Air Force One, walked off the plane, waved to reporters, and walked across the tarmac to board Air Force Qatar for the flight home across the Atlantic as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Lie Number Four.

As if that's not bad enough, details of this extraordinary event were covered up by the White House for an entire month, until it was first revealed by the Washington Post on August 10. At which point, Trump blamed it all on the Secret Service. "It's really just up to Secret Service," he told reporters. "I just follow what they like to do. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety. ... I do what they say."

Not so fast. Everybody wants the Secret Service to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the president. They were right not to let Trump fly on a plane that, according to Israeli intelligence, was targeted by Iranian terrorists with shoulder-to-air missiles. But that still leaves several unanswered questions.

First, why did Trump take Executive Assistant Natalie Harp, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and a couple of others with him, but leave the rest of his entourage behind?

Second, if Air Force One was not safe for Trump to fly on, why was it safe for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, many senior White House officials, and the entire White House press corps - all of whom were on board the decoy plane. Or, as reporters have now dubbed it, the "Bait Plane." Were they given any warning? Were they offered a choice? Or were their lives just considered expendable?

Third, why were no reporters, even sworn to secrecy, allowed to accompany the president? For decades, it has been established precedent that the pool goes wherever the president goes. George W. Bush kept a small group of reporters with him on September 11. Instead, Trump forced reporters to lie for a month.

Fourth. They missed all advance signs of a Hamas invasion on October 7. They were wrong when they said the Iranian regime would immediately collapse if we bombed it on February 28. So why did we believe Israeli intelligence reports about threats to Air Force One? Did US intelligence agencies confirm the danger?

I don't normally believe in conspiracy theories, but it does make you wonder: Is that really Donald Trump up there in front of a crowd? Or is it somebody else, wearing a wig, making a fool of himself?
____

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: "From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire." His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

What Reflecting Pool reflects ain’t pretty

The clue for #55 down in the New York Times crossword puzzle for August 5 - "apt name for a groundskeeper" - got me thinking about other apt names, or "aptronyms." As it turns out, the world is full of them.

There was once a famous quarterback named Willie Thrower, and a horticulturist named Rose Bush. When I worked at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, our weatherman was Dallas Raines. Google also notes surgeon Dr. Cutter, orthopedist Dr. Bone, dentist Dr. Smiley, and plumbing manufacturer Thomas Crapper. We all remember a former congressman with the unfortunate aptronym Anthony Weiner. The groundskeeper's name, by the way, is Lon. And don't forget a journalist whose real name is Press.

But in Washington, nobody or nothing is more aptly named than the Reflecting Pool. Stretching out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool was designed by Henry Bacon to be a mirror of water, reflecting and connecting the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Memorial. It used to be one of the most magical places in the capital. Especially at night, it took your breath away.

It's also one of Washington's most historic sites. Where 75,000 gathered on Easter Sunday 1939 to hear Marian Anderson sing, after she was banned from Constitution Hall, and where 250,000 cheered on Aug. 28, 1963, hearing Martin Luther King Jr. declare "I Have a Dream." And where, on Jan. 19, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden lined the rim with 400 lights, one for every thousand Americans dead from Covid-19.

But today, thanks to Donald Trump, the Reflecting Pool's nothing but a big, ugly, scar on the National Mall. I went there this week to see for myself. It's fenced off, so no one can get close. It's totally drained and empty, except for water leftover from this week's rainstorms. Its bottom is a dismal grey. And, though Trump promised to have the Reflecting Pool back, more beautiful than ever, by July 4, not one workman was in sight.

What happened to the Reflecting Pool reflects everything wrong about Donald Trump. As he relates, after a German tourist complained that the pool looked dirty, Trump - who'd already destroyed the Rose Garden and the East Wing of the White House - seized the Reflecting Pool as his latest personal destruction project.

On April 3, without consulting any experts or engineers, Trump ordered the Interior Department to gut and repaint the bottom of the pool "American flag blue." Then, in violation of federal construction guidelines, he awarded a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, whose only similar experience had been painting a pool at his Virginia golf course.

There followed a string of lies. On May 27, he said the Reflecting Pool is "longer than the tallest building in the world if you set it on the side." It's not. He said it's "almost 200 feet wide." It's not. He said the whole renovation would take one week and cost $1.8 million. It didn't. It's August, it's still not finished, and it's already cost $14.7 million.

We all know what happened next. Atlantic Industrial drained the pool, repainted the bottom and refilled it. The pool filled with algae and turned green, not blue. The pool was drained and repainted again and again, but sheets of paint kept peeling and floating to the surface. At which point, falsely egged on by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump claimed "vandals" had used "a very sharp knife or razors" to slice the paint, and later dumped fertilizer into the pool.

Trump then ordered the Justice Department to track down the "vandals," which US Attorney Jeanine Pirro promptly saluted and did, charging three people with misdemeanors and three-time Olympian David Carter Hearn with a felony for the "crime" of reaching down and touching a strip of the peeling blue paint.

The whole thing was so ridiculous it had to fall apart. And it did on July 31, when Pirro suddenly dropped charges against Hearn and others, while admitting that problems with the Reflecting Pool were the result of "botched workmanship," not vandalism.

Reportedly, the result was a contentious, finger-pointing, Oval Office confrontation between Trump, Pirro and Burgum. But all three are guilty. Pirro for filing charges with zero evidence to back them up, Burgum for blaming it on vandals and Trump himself, for lying about the entire operation and still blaming it on vandals.

The Reflecting Pool. Again, how aptly named. Because nothing better reflects the stupidity, incompetence, cruelty and criminality of the Trump administration.
____

Black and white portrait of an elderly man smiling in a suit and glasses.