{"id":1055,"date":"2026-06-04T22:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2026-06-04T22:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:39:16","slug":"the-lies-keep-piling-up-on-trumps-most-clumsy-grift-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1055","title":{"rendered":"The lies keep piling up on Trump\u2019s most clumsy grift: report"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It’s hard to keep up with the never-ending cascade of drama pouring out of the White House these days, but reporter David A. Fahrenthold tells Slate that one of President Donald Trump\u2019s more recent grifts is more obvious and even easier to expose than some others. From the very start of Trump\u2019s announcement of the \u201cbluing\u201d of the Lincoln memorial reflecting pool, there were questions \u2014 and plenty to be suspicious about.<\/p>\n

Read more USDA celebrates \u2018Trump\u2019s 500 Days of Wins\u2019 as farm bankruptcies spike<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was remarkable was that at every step, as you peeled back another layer, something wasn\u2019t quite what it was supposed to be or what Trump had said it was. It seemed as if it should have been a simple job. But every step made it more interesting,\u201d Fahrenthold told Slate writer Aymann Ismail.<\/p>\n

Aside from this being an expensive no-bid contract, Trump had announced that: \u201cI found this contractor myself. He worked on the pool at my golf club.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only he didn\u2019t. The president\u2019s pool guy was not renovating the Reflecting Pool<\/em>, said Fahrenthold.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we started reporting, we found all these ways in which his account didn\u2019t seem to square with reality. We realized, \u2018Wait, it\u2019s not actually a pool guy<\/em>.\u2019 And then all these other things the president had said about it turned out not to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, he\u2019s not Trump\u2019s pool guy,\u201d said Fahrenthold. \u201cHe\u2019s not anybody\u2019s pool guy. It\u2019s a company that, as far as I can tell, doesn\u2019t do swimming pools. They coat highway culverts. They work on fuel tanks and roofs and things like that, but they are not a swimming pool company at all. And as far as I can tell, they have never worked for any of Trump\u2019s pool companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Ex-defense secretary says \u2018Trump\u2019s Vietnam\u2019 in Iran will haunt us for years<\/a><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not like anybody was saying this needed to happen. The slabs at the bottom of the pool are 8 inches of concrete, said Fahrenthold. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf water is leaking through 8 inches of concrete, it\u2019s not very much. Nobody had ever said that this was the problem that needed fixing. But all of a sudden, the Trump administration decided, ‘<\/em>This is something we need to do, and we need to spend millions of dollars to do it,’\u201d Fahrenthold said.<\/p>\n

So Trump\u2019s people chose a company with no experience with sealing pools. Fahrenthold says they\u2019re disregarding expert opinions. The administration is locking other, potentially cheaper and better bidders out of the process, and they\u2019re jumping right in to finish the project in a rush to July 4.<\/p>\n

Fahrenthold says if they\u2019re this sloppy for a reflecting pool, how does the administration manage even bigger projects, like a war in Iran? Or a press to upset global trade with a blanket of painful tariffs?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Reflecting Pool contract goes bad, what happens? The pool leaks a little bit. There\u2019s algae. It\u2019s not that different from the status quo Trump inherited. But you can tell, in that situation, how they got themselves into this easily avoidable problem,\u201d Fahrenthold told Ismail . \u201cAnd you can see their decision-making approach to a million other things that are much more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more It\u2019s too late for Republicans to recover from predicted doom: GOP strategist<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to keep up with the never-ending cascade of drama pouring out of the White House these days, but reporter David A. Fahrenthold tells Slate that one of President Donald Trump\u2019s more recent grifts is more obvious and even easier to expose than some others. From the very start of Trump\u2019s anno…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe lies keep piling up on Trump\u2019s most clumsy grift: report - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1055\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The lies keep piling up on Trump\u2019s most clumsy grift: report - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's hard to keep up with the never-ending cascade of drama pouring out of the White House these days, but reporter David A. 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