Trump’s Handpicked Company Screwed Up Reflecting Pool Reno From Start

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s peeling lining was the work of vandals. An independent analysis has concluded otherwise.

After reviewing photographs and satellite imagery, and speaking with experts, The Washington Post found that the extensive gashes in the pool liner were likely the result of improper application. The Thursday report noted that the tears appeared in at least seven places “along seams that were created when the material was applied in large rectangular sections.”

Noting that reporters were not able to access the center of the pool during a June 25 visit, the Post chronicled that the peeling occurred in irregularly shaped patches along the edges of the patchwork seams, with sloughing pieces ranging in size from several inches to as much as six feet. Some sections of the lining were so damaged that reporters were able to see the bare concrete underneath.

Rhino Linings, a popular truck-bed coating company that received the no-bid contract to do the job, has been named in several lawsuits since 2021 alleging that its liners were inadequate and resulted in hundreds of leaks.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump and his entourage have pinned the problem on supposed troublemakers dead set on destroying his $16 million renovation project (a cost that’s a far cry from his promised $1.8 million price tag for the endeavor). The White House has not provided any great evidence for the theory but has raised tensions around the Reflecting Pool, anyway. By late June, at least seven individuals were arrested for allegedly destroying the pool, including former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn.

The White House denied that any mistakes had been made during the renovation process.

“Unfortunately, deranged individuals made several gashes in the side of the pool and destroyed over 300 feet of the pool’s siding,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Post. “Once the necessary repairs to fix the vandalism are complete, the Reflecting Pool will be restored to all its glory.”

The company that had handled the memorial’s last renovation in 2010, the New Jersey–based Sika Corporation, was offered the chance to do this renovation before the job was offered to Rhino Linings. Speaking with CNN last month, two employees at Sika said the company had declined the offer due to Trump’s demands. Those included requirements that the pool be painted “American flag blue,” and that the restoration be completed by July 4. Both demands made the project “unfeasible,” according to the employees.

A White House teleprompter operator appears to have made over $100,000 betting on President Trump’s speeches.

ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reports that a longtime staffer for the president, Gabriel Perez, was placing bets on Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi, sparking an investigation from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.

Perez, a technical assistant, has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, and is now speaking to federal investigators over allegations that he profited from inside knowledge. Perez allegedly bet on several of Trump’s speeches over three months, including the president’s prime-time address in December 2025, his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2026, and a Trump speech in March at a Medal of Honor ceremony.

Kalshi reportedly alerted the CFTC about suspicious activity on its “Mentions” market, which allows bets on whether certain words, topics, or phrases come up in public speech.

“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,” the lead lawyer for Kalshi, Bobby DeNault, told ABC News in a statement.

“The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said to ABC News. “The staffer in question is fully cooperating with the CFTC.”

In late March, the White House warned its staffers not to bet on world events in prediction markets.

Perez usually is the last person to see Trump’s prepared speeches, even taking last-minute edits from the president. In some cases, investigators found that Perez would change his bets while Trump was in the middle of a speech after the president skipped over certain words.

After meeting with regulators in the last few months, Perez acknowledged making the trades, and the CFTC alerted federal prosecutors in New York, who decided against a criminal investigation. CFTC regulators are reportedly willing to settle with Perez, allowing him to return his profits and refrain from any future bets.

In April, a special forces soldier involved in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged with using confidential intelligence to win $400,000 on the prediction market Polymarket. It seems some in the Trump administration see their positions as a way to make money, even trading in national secrets.

Harlan Crow, the billionaire patron of Republican-aligned causes, groups, and politicians, has found a new beneficiary in rightward-shifting Democratic Senator John Fetterman.

Crow, who is also a known Nazi memorabilia collector, has long heaped money on conservatives, most notably lavishing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with extensive gifts and favors for years, all of which Thomas failed to disclose and were only revealed thanks to a ProPublica investigation.

On June 30, Crow gave $7,000—the maximum allowed donation—to Fetterman’s campaign, according to a Federal Election Commission filing reported Wednesday by The Intercept.

Elected in 2022, Fetterman flipped a red seat after projecting a progressive image that quickly faded once he assumed office. He has taken a staunchly pro-Israel stance that borders on monomaniacal; this week, he stated he has “no plans” to leave the Democratic Party but would do so if it becomes “the anti-Israel party.” His unbridled support for Israel, and increasing alignment with President Donald Trump on other issues, led his staffers to jump ship en masse last year.

This metamorphosis has apparently attracted conservative donors other than Crow. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported earlier this year, Fetterman’s war chest has been lined by donors such as billionaire Ed Glazer and investor Matthew Ocko.

And while Crow usually wields his financial largesse in service of right-wingers, he has also given occasionally to corporate-friendly Democrats, such as Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Henry Cuellar, as well as former Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, according to the Revolving Door Project.

Numerous Pennsylvania Democrats are reportedly considering challenging Fetterman in 2028. A remarkable Quinnipiac University poll of registered Pennsylvania voters, released Wednesday, has his approval rating at 77 percent among Republicans and just 19 percent among Democrats.

A survivor of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein testified at Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing on Thursday, hammering the acting attorney general for meeting with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell for nine hours while refusing to give Epstein survivors even one minute of his time.

“According to public reporting, Mr. Blanche spent approximately nine hours meeting with Ghislane Maxwell. He did not even spend nine minutes meeting with a survivor,” said survivor Dani Bensky. “Afterwards, Maxwell was transferred to what many have described as a ‘summer camp prison.’ We learned all of this through the news. Imagine what that feels like as a survivor—to sit there—if you are exploited by Ghislaine Maxwell and you’re hearing this for the first time with no explanation, no outreach, no transparency from your government.”

Bensky is referring to Maxwell’s transfer from a federal prison camp to a cushier, more open prison with unlimited toilet paper, technology access, and a pass to use prison facilities late at night, following her meeting with Blanche last July. That, along with Blanche’s highly consistent redactions, has made his handling of the Epstein files particularly questionable, Bensky noted. She also brought up Blanche’s presence in the Situation Room last year while the Trump administration was deciding how to handle its bungling of the files.

“To add insult to injury, the information that Todd Blanche gathered in the White House Situation Room last summer to curb the political fallout from the Epstein files was absolutely abhorrent. Instead of following investigative leads, our government treated … this as a political crisis that needs to be managed,” Bensky continued. “In our nation, everyone deserves equal protection under the law. Todd Blanche has been unwilling to protect Epstein survivors’ personal information, and he has been resistant to investigate the people who helped Epstein and Maxwell commit those crimes. We need an attorney general committed to ensuring that everyone who facilitated Epstein’s crimes is held accountable. Please, I implore you. Please.”

“The survivors in this room know there are investigative leads because they are our stories,” Bensky said. “Mr. Blanche knows it too. Yet he has chosen not to pursue them.”

Blanche offered pretty mixed signals on whether he’d actually meet with any survivors during his own testimony on Wednesday, telling Senator Dick Durbin that “we will never, never not talk to victims,” while in the same breath stating “if they have lawyers, as you know. I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them.”

Bensky was a 17-year-old aspiring ballerina when she was first recruited to give massages to Epstein in his penthouse. She and at least 18 other victims have come out against Blanche’s nomination for attorney general.

The cost of the Iran war could well exceed $100 billion now that the conflict has reignited.

The Trump administration has not officially released any figures related to the total cost of the war, but U.S. intelligence officials have predicted that the overall cost thus far could be greater than $100 billion, Wired reported Wednesday.

The hesitation on the final count boils down to whether or not the Pentagon decides to replace part of its airfleet that was damaged or destroyed in the war, according to insiders that spoke with Wired. If it does, the cost will go up.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service tallied 42 lost or damaged U.S. aircraft in a May 13 report, including an Boeing E-3 Sentry that costs upward of $270 million, an MQ-4C Triton drone that costs around $618 million, and four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft that cost roughly $65 million a pop.

The exact cost of the war has been difficult to pin down. Late last month, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told the House Appropriations Committee that the U.S. had spent $30 billion on the Iran war. But even he must have known that figure was wildly inaccurate, considering that he had written and signed a formal request “on behalf of the president” for $88 billion in supplemental defense funding from Congress days earlier, including a $72 billion increase for the war effort.

An independent review of U.S. expenses through the four-month war was published last week by Popular Information’s Stephen Semler, who found that Trump officials had dramatically lowballed Congress on the real cost of the conflict (Semler also co-founded the U.S. foreign policy think tank Security Policy Reform Institute).

In order to build an independent analysis of the Pentagon’s expenditures, Semler analyzed procurement information, operating and support data, open-source intelligence, statements from U.S. officials, and media reports.

Over the first 120 days of the conflict, Semler tallied $28.5 billion in mobilization, administrative, and immediate combat costs; $46.7 billion spent on missiles, interceptors, and bombs; $20.3 billion on damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.9 billion on Israel’s bombs and interceptors; and an additional $4.8 billion on war costs to nonmilitary U.S. agencies. All in all, Semler estimated that the true cost of the U.S.-Iran war is closer to $103 billion.

Yet no one in charge of the government—from the White House to top congressional Republicans—has posited exactly how the U.S. will pay for the war. Whereas taxes were raised in previous wars (such as World War I, World War II, and the Korean War) in order to fund conflict, the current administration has so far offered no such solution.