So exactly what was going on with the reflecting pool I don't know. Sounds like this guy peeled off a strip that was already separating from the bottom of the pool. Trump claims there are other cases on video that are more clearly instances of vandalism.
On the one hand, Trump is notoriously full of shit, and everyone knows it--with the exception of some hard-core Trumpistas. Much of what he says is true and important...but much of the time he just says what he wants to be true, no matter how obviously false it might be. A lot of this is close on a continuum with standard political bullshitting. E.g. he represented the country as crashing and burning under Biden (pretty true...but exaggerated), and now says we're in a golden age... Well, we're better off (bracketing the Iran war...about which...who knows?). Anyway, we can't trust Trump about things like the reflecting pool--and anyone who doesn't know that is just not paying attention. This is exactly the kind of thing he can't seem to resist bullshitting about.
OTOH, vandalizing this Trump project is something the left is willing to and capable of doing. There was a lot of loose (?) chatter on lefty social media about using box cutters and whatnot to wreck it. Even if the thing was already peeling, why did what's-his-name reach in and tear the strip off? Not a crime, perhaps...but also not a perfectly innocuous reaction.
My guess--just a guess--is that this is mostly Trumpian bullshitting. But who knows?
Anyway: Trump's credentials as a liar and a bullshitter are well-established. (Acknowledging, again, that he often speaks important truths that the left wants to suppress.)
However...
It's eminently worth noting that the left remains far, far worse--whatever comfort that might provide to Mr. Trump's devotees...
Note that this story (well, it's CNN...so...par for the course...) trots out the same old tale that the left recycles ever time this issue comes up:
His method of deciding what is true and requiring everyone to accommodate him emerged as a signature trait only hours into his first presidency. Fuming over unflattering comparisons between his inaugural crowd and Obama’s first swearing-in, he sent then-press secretary Sean Spicer into the briefing room to deliver a bizarre statement. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said.
At the time, it seemed absurd. But it was an important moment. Spicer was the the [sic] first Trump official to choose between observable reality and his boss’s false version. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway coined a presidency-defining soundbite for the ages when referring to the president’s “alternative facts.”
[1] What Spicer and Conway clearly meant (as context made extremely clear at the time) was that the Trump administration was looking at
other facts--or, more accurately, other
evidence--about crowd size. There are, in fact, apparently a couple of different ways to estimate crowd size. The Park Service does it one way (almost certainly the best way...this is something they do all the time) but there are others.
The most important point here is that the 'alternative facts' claim was in no way some assertion of alethic relativism nor anything like it. It's--epistemically, at least--innocuous.
The fact that the left always appeals to this same bogus story shows how little they have to work with on this front.
[2] Really probably [1']...and just for the record: yeah, the Trumpistas were bullshitting. The best methods had already been used. Even the other methods, IIRC, indicated that Obama's crowd had been bigger. They really had nothing. The fact that Trump was so obsessed about this stupid measure was a bad sign...but, again: not relativism. I was extremely anti-Trump at the time, and I said the same thing then. This is the leftist media bullshitting while (in this case rightly) accusing Trump of bullshitting... This is very much like the left's Very Fine People hoax--it's just lies and wishful thinking resulting in twisting the other side's words.
[3] The left, however is eaten up with insane views about truth, facts, knowledge, justification, objectivity, and all sorts of related ideas. It's flirted with a radioactive mishmash of relativism, skepticism, subjectivism and nihilism for as long as I can remember. From Lysenko to political correctness to multiculturalism to Woketarianism. Lefties love talking about "my truth" (an ambiguous phrase with an innocuous interpretation and a stupid one), and to pretend that your sex-or-gender (another loony pseudo-concept) is whatever you think it is... The journalistic establishment--far to the left, but in no way out of step with mainstream progressivism--published a big report two years ago titled "Beyond Objectivity"...guess what it was about? Every time I've raised the issue of institutional neutrality at my university--save for one single time--some other faculty-member (usually not from my department) has objected that objectivity and/or neutrality aren't possible... The left has flirted with relativism and other types of philosophical lunacy at least since the '30s...what the hell do you think Orwell was on about???
And, again: few people believe Trump's bullshitting--and even fewer people that matter.
OTOH, the left's insane views end up becoming orthodoxy in our most important institutions...
None of this is to defend Trump--who's a goddamned train wreck in this respect, and who deserves no defense.
It's just an attempt to put things into perspective--FWTW.
This is what a mess we're in: Donald Trump is NOT the biggest enemy of the truth on the contemporary American political stage...not by a long shot.
Not to put too fine a point on it: that's a desperate situation indeed.
