Trump isn't the disease — he's the symptom America needs to confront

The Reflecting Pool reflects us as much as it does Trump.

Editor’s note: I’m sending Tuesday’s edition of the Editorial Board via Substack. I haven’t used Substack in years, but people continue to sign up for the free version of my newsletter. So I feel an obligation to give people what they are asking for. I encourage you to become a paid subscriber using the link at the bottom or by going to www.editorialboard.com to check for updates. In the meanwhile, onward together! Thank you. –John Stoehr

The president contaminated the Reflecting Pool that’s in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Donald Trump had the bottom of it painted blue in celebration of himself, er, America’s 250th anniversary. The $14 million paint job is now peeling. Algae is blooming. Efforts to kill it with hydrogen peroxide have made it look like a giant Mark Rothko painting. The Times reported that the White House gave the task of “refurbishing” the pool to a firm tied to a Trump donor.

CBS News@CBSNews

Paint was seen peeling from the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, weeks after a $14 million renovation that included a new color President Trump called “American Flag Blue.”

10:18 PM · Jun 18, 2026 · 13.3M Views

---

4.74K Replies · 4.34K Reposts · 24.1K Likes

Liberals and Democrats sometimes get caught up in abstractions. We often lose people by talking about “institutions” and “oligarchs.” So the pool is an appealing metaphor, as is the president’s attempt to blame others for his mess. Authorities charged a former Olympian for “vandalizing“ the monument. The National Guard was ordered to protect its desecration. (Claiming vandalism, Trump said that the pool would need to be drained again and redone.)

“This story is such a perfect reflection (no pun intended) of Donald Trump’s failures and character flaws that it might have unique power to break through some otherwise impermeable skulls,” my pal Marty Longman said in his newsletter, which I recommend.

“Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said on Twitter. “The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.”

I agree, but I think it should be said that there’s more to the story than one man and one president who turns everything he touches into “crud,” as Paul Krugman told Greg Sargent. A national monument that is being choked with peeling paint and pollution, and that is being “protected” by a perversion of power, reflects something about us. It reveals the inner state of our national character: decayed, declining, diseased, and in desperate need of healing.

I think it’s easy to suggest that Donald Trump is the exception to the rule and that what he is doing is not who we are as a people. But it’s harder to suggest, because it’s more truthful to suggest, that he’s the rule itself, and that what he’s doing is exactly who we are. After all, we elected him twice. You could say the first time was a fluke. The second time, however, was a choice. A majority chose a pool of corruption, because they themselves have been corrupted.

Usually, liberal don’t talk this way, especially liberal pundits like me. We blame Trump for every evil, and see the metaphor of the Reflecting Pool as an opportunity to press our case against him. But we stop short of taking in the whole of what the Reflecting Pool is reflecting, namely that there’s something deeply morally rotten when a country like ours can produce, maintain and empower a man like him. We speak of symptoms, but overlook the disease. We speak of strategies, but not about a people experiencing the crisis of their collective soul.

Talking like this is second nature to me. I was raised among very conservative Protestants. We were weaned on Bible stories about a nation that faced repeated calamity for turning against righteousness. (That “nation” was ancient Israel but the link to America was implicit for us.) Liberals talk about Trump voters who are suffering from the consequences of their choices and hope they will learn from their pain. But we’re all part of the same political community and we’re all feeling pain. What are the rest of us learning if we are only willing to see Trump in the Reflecting Pool and not ourselves? God’s judgment isn’t for him alone.

Why are some of us willing to see Trump in the Reflecting Pool but not ourselves? No doubt the answer is partisanship and ideology, but it’s also myth. We believe deep in our bones that America is special, a sovereign country above all others. Our sense of patriotism and pride is deeply rooted in this idea of God-given superiority. Therefore, it’s impossible for a pool of putrid green water to reflect our people, because we are the wonder-boy nation, and because of that, Donald Trump is a mistake, a blip in our history, a deviation from our values.

Some of his supporters seem to be coming around to that way of thinking. While that’s good news for the Democrats and their chances of success in the next election, that’s bad news in the long term. If we cannot collectively face the whole truth, and the fact that Trump is not a mutation of the American genome but a faithful expression of it, then it won’t be long until we see another of his kind, and when we do, many of us will again be shocked and unable to accept the idea that his very existence is a picture-perfect reflection of who we are.

You know who has no trouble looking into the Reflecting Pool and seeing a picture-perfect reflection of who we are as a people? The children of the immigrants who are being savaged in the name of national pride. A mother in Connecticut is suing ICE for separating her from her children, leaving them in the car, wailing. According to the Courant, the suit “described Martinez’s son as someone who was ‘once a bubbly child’ who now struggles to sleep through the night. In school, he frequently interrupts class because of his uncontrollable crying. The complaint describes one instance where he sat down outside a classroom, told his teacher that he missed his mom and stayed on the ground crying for almost 20 minutes.”

That boy will eventually grow up. He will live a healthy, happy life if he’s lucky. But no matter his good fortune, he will never forget what the United States really is. No amount of belief in American exceptionalism is going to change that. Moreover, what our government is doing to the children of immigrants like him cannot be undone. Five hundred literal babies have spent time in ICE custody since Trump returned to power, according to the Marshall Project. (They are among the 6,200 minors that the government has detained since early 2025.) In the future, when these people are looking back, the pain of their childhood trauma will be deepened beyond comprehension by the insistence that this is not who we are. Try telling these kids that the American people aren’t so bad, that they were just mad about inflation.

I do not expect anyone to take my advice. I am but a humble newsletter writer. Anyway, most of us don’t want redemption from the truth. We want relief from the responsibility of doing something about it. Accepting that America is the kind of country that will take food away from 770,000 hungry kids, for instance, and then making the necessary sacrifices to reverse that crime, is too much for most of us. It feels better to be told by an aspiring leader that a disgusting Reflecting Pool is not a picture of who we really are, and that the true authentic soul of America will reemerge once the right party is in charge. Redemption would require giving up the privilege of America being God’s special exception. Conceding that we’re just another country in the eyes of God is a loss, and a humiliation, that’s too great to bear.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. (Don’t know if you’re a subscriber? Check your status below.) –JS

Start a FREE 7-day trial!