Trump Launches AI Surveillance of Reflecting Pool as Disaster Grows

Federal law enforcement were spotted installing AI-powered surveillance towers at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s weird obsession.

In one video shared by TMZ Tuesday, U.S. Marshals escorted an LVT Mobile Security Unit to the edge of the Reflecting Pool.

In another video a day earlier, Daily Mail reporter John Michael Raasch witnessed a surveillance tower being towed in circles around the supposedly embattled landmark by U.S. Parks Police.

These towers do more than just record passerby: They automatically detect and alert so-called threats, and use AI-powered audio alerts, strobes, and a powerful spotlight to deter crime. Most likely, they will just catch tourists.

The installation of security equipment is a significant escalation after several people, including a former U.S. Olympian, were arrested for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. Trump has nonsensically claimed that vandals cut a massive slit in the bottom of the pool, but has refused to provide any evidence of the crime, which no one else has spotted. Now, it seems that he doesn’t want anyone to get too close.

Trump has directed more than $16 million in renovations toward the Reflecting Pool, but just days before the country’s 250th anniversary, it was once again filled with algae and appeared to be literally falling apart.

The size of the “slit” cut into the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool just keeps growing, according to President Trump in interviews and his own social media posts. But so far, no one has been able to find any evidence that it exists at all.

On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social that “vandals” had damaged the pool, and that they would now have to drain it in order to make repairs. He claimed it “worked perfectly” before it was attacked.

“They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work,” Trump wrote.

But by Monday, the size of the “gash” had grown to 300 feet, according to another post. And on Tuesday, the president said that the cut was 350 feet long.

Though Trump’s claims keep getting more and more outlandish, he refuses to share photos of the problem, or any evidence that anyone vandalized the pool. CBS News went and inspected the pool and found no evidence of the gash, whether it be 250, 300, or 350 feet.

“One thing we still can’t find is any evidence of a gash along the floor of the pool,” said CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Tuesday morning. “Despite that, the Interior Department is taking steps to drain the pool again, and fix it again.”

Trump has already spent over $16 million renovating the pool—who knows how much it will cost to drain and repair it all over again? American taxpayers continue to shoulder the financial burden of another of Trump’s slapdash vanity projects.

The “Arc de Trump” could have had a giant fist attached to it.

One design that President Donald Trump proposed for his $15 million glamor project involved placing an enormous fist atop the 250-foot Arc de Triomphe dupe, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

The fist would have served as a visual reminder of Trump’s response to his attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.

“As the president showed off his models to a visitor one day in October, he puzzled over the details, including whether the arch should include a platform to take in the view,” Haberman and Swan wrote.

“Privately, he had also been asking confidants what he should have on top of the arc,” the section continues. “Should it be, he mused, a large replica of his ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ fist?”

The book also highlights the arch’s enormous size, which would “dwarf” both the original, 162.5-foot arc in Paris, which was built at the direction of Napoleon Bonaparte to commemorate the military achievements of the French empire, and the 200-foot Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, which was erected to commemorate the 70th birthday of North Korea’s totalitarian founder Kim Il Sung, as well as the nation’s resistance to Japanese occupation during World War II.

Other suggestions that have been since removed from the proposed design include a replica of Lady Liberty and a pair of eagles sitting atop the proposed arch, which would have added to its height.

The project is still going through a review cycle, but Trump officials have indicated that they want the site up and running by July 2028, six months before Trump’s term is set to end.

Trump’s arch has faced enormous opposition. If it breaks ground, it will physically situate Trump’s legacy between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, interrupting a hallowed conversation between the president that ended slavery and the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order to do so.

The Department of Homeland Security is finally allowing the Iranian World Cup soccer team to travel to match locations a day early—something that nearly every other participating country in the tournament has been able to do. But they still won’t be allowed to stay overnight after their games on U.S. soil.

“Ahead of the match in Seattle on June 26, the Iranian team will be allowed to come in match day minus two, so two days before the match. They’ll be asked to leave the day that the match wraps up, so the evening of the match,” a DHS spokesperson told NBC. “Again, the President wants to make sure that we’re talking about what actually happens on the pitch.… A lot of that is making sure that things are safe and secure, not just around the stadiums, but around base camps and training sites.”

This decision comes after the Trump administration first denied the visas of 15—then 11—team assistants, blocking them from entering the U.S. The team itself was essentially booted from the country right after their matches in Los Angeles on June 15 and June 21, forcing them to stay in Tijuana, Mexico, rather than their abandoned base camp in Tucson, Arizona, as originally planned, or anywhere near the city they were playing in. The team also still has to go through hours of security checks each time they enter the U.S. from Mexico.

This constant back-and-forth is detrimental to both the performance and the morale of the players, who have nothing to do with America’s ongoing war on Iran.

“I think it’s not good for the football,” said team captain Mehdi Taremi last week. “In [the] World Cup, you have to prepare good for the next game, which is a lot of stress for the players and the staff and everyone. But we don’t have that support, and I think FIFA have to help us more than this. Let’s see what’s going to happen in the future.”

Iran qualified for the World Cup in the spring of 2025, months before the joint U.S.-Israeli attack that started the war in February.

A White House spokesperson flipped out Tuesday after he was quoted failing to deny a report suggesting President Donald Trump may have been given early access to a weight loss drug.

A STAT report Tuesday found that one 79-year-old man had received special access to retatrutide, a powerful new weight loss drug—prompting speculation that the individual in question was none other than the president of the United States.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai publicly lashed out at STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence, who in her original report, noted that Desai did not explicitly deny that Trump was the patient in question.

“Because this has to be spelled out for @LizzyLaw_, who has proven herself to be an unserious gossip columnist, this application was not for the President,” Desai wrote on X Tuesday after the story quickly gained national attention.

“Thank you for clarifying. I asked you, the FDA, and HHS multiple times yesterday whether this application was for the President. No one answered my question directly,” Lawrence replied.

“We shouldn’t have to bat down baseless speculation for you to not print it. Any reporter with standards would understand this,” Desai wrote. “Are you going to now go ask this idiotic question to the ~4 million Americans in this age cohort and then speculate about them being the application?”

As a White House spokesperson, it’s Desai’s responsibility to respond to queries from the press. As TNR contributor Nina Burleigh pointed out on X: “If you don’t want to do your job, maybe stop taking taxpayer funds…”

Desai did little to dismiss the story when it first came across his desk and originally referred STAT to the Department of Health and Human Services, which didn’t offer a denial either.

In fact, Desai may have fueled further questions about the president’s health. When the 79-year-old patient requested “compassionate use” access to retatrutide in April, it was to treat refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension.

Asked whether Trump has obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, Desai originally told STAT a White House memo on Trump’s most recent medical evaluation “covers this.” It does not.