🧑🩰“Reflecting Pool Pirro-uette” Edition
The saga of Washington’s infamous Reflecting Pool somehow became even more ridiculous this week, as President Trump reportedly summoned U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to the Oval Office for what amounted to a scolding over the unforgivable sin of telling the truth.
Furious that Pirro had dropped the criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn, Trump accused his own hand-picked prosecutor of “folding like an umbrella.” Pirro, apparently anticipating a hostile meeting, arrived carrying a banker’s box stuffed with evidence, giving the encounter all the gravitas of a fifth-grade science fair project.
According to reports, the meeting quickly devolved into a blame-shifting contest. Pirro reportedly unloaded on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, accusing him of misleading the president and concealing evidence that the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner was the result of a botched installation by a no-bid contractor. In other words, the only thing more damaged than the Reflecting Pool was the administration’s preferred narrative. It turns out the alleged criminal mastermind was...incompetence. Again.
The irony is difficult to overstate. The administration spent weeks portraying the case as proof that lawlessness demanded swift justice, only to discover that the government’s own paperwork pointed toward contractor error all along. Pirro didn’t merely drop the charges against Hearn; she also dismissed cases against three others after prosecutors concluded the evidence didn’t support the original claims. That’s the sort of thing prosecutors are supposed to do, though it apparently came as unwelcome news to those who were looking for scapegoats.
As for Pirro’s future, Trump says he still hasn’t decided whether to fire her. Apparently, the quickest way to jeopardize your job in Washington is not by bringing a weak case, but by admitting it was weak. The Reflecting Pool may yet become a national monument, not to Abraham Lincoln, but to the administration’s remarkable ability to turn their own incompetence into an Orwellian novel.
KAL - Substack and Andrews McMeel
Tim Campbell - Tribune Content Agency
Ted Rall - Andrews McMeel
Clay Jones - Substack and Claytoonz
Jimmy Margulies - King Features
Bill Bramhall - Tribune Content Agency
Dave Whamond - cagle.com/whamond
Pedro Molina - Tinyview and Tribune Content Agency
Clay Bennett - Tribune Content Agency
The irony of Himself saying that Jeanine "folded like an umbrella" is the famous video of him climbing the stairs to one of his planes with an umbrella, trying to fold it, and failing to do so, leaving it for one of his lackeys. The Tangerine Tyrant's incompetence in all things doesn't humanize him, it emphasizes his non-humanity. His personality emphasizes his inhumanity. Like Narcissus he doesn't recognize that a reflecting pool is a place for reflection, for introspection. He's never met a mirror that showed him as other than what his blindness permits, a distorted and garish view of himself as superior. One has to ask: to whom?
Yay, Clay!