REFLECTING HIS MADNESS

Why Trump’s Slimy Humiliation Is Driving Him Mad: Biographer

Trump’s obsession with his Reflecting Pool disaster is a sign of something more troubling, says Michael Wolff.

President Donald Trump’s obsession with his disastrous Reflecting Pool renovation is unraveling him—and alarming White House aides as he exhibits possible signs of dementia, his biographer Michael Wolff says.

Trump is presently enraged over his failed $14 million updates to the Reflecting Pool, as chunks of “American flag blue” paint are peeling off the bottom, and algae continues to bloom.

The president has since claimed that the algae is the result of vandals and has pledged to drain and renovate the pool for a second time.

Wolff cited several people close to Trump, who told him they were concerned that the president “is devoting almost all of his time to the Reflecting Pool. All of his anger, all of his rage, all of his demands—and now his need for vengeance: someone must be responsible.”

“It’s an insult to the country and a challenge to him personally,” Wolff said on the latest episode of the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast.

“The discussion that I’m having with people is that, you know, 60, 70, 80 percent of his time—and remember, he doesn’t work that much—is devoted to the Reflecting Pool,” Wolff explained.

The author noted that Trump’s obsession with his failed renovation comes amid his uncertain peace deal with Iran, and the predicted wipeout that the GOP is facing in the 2026 midterm elections.

“But he is focused on the Reflecting Pool,” Wolff said, adding, “Now we can obviously make a little nod here to Narcissus and his reflecting pool... It is, even for people who work with Donald Trump every day, a weird moment.”

Co-host Joanna Coles agreed that it is “a weird moment because he’s so thoroughly obsessed.”

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“Is this because he thinks of himself as a sort of hotelier/ builder, and this is actually something he should be able to do?” she asked.

To that, Wolff said that while he doesn’t want to make a diagnosis, Trump’s obsession with the Reflecting Pool appears to be “one of those dementia things.”

“You close out the rest of the world and you just focus on these problems, which are really minor, and you turn them into obsessions,” he said, adding, “What is the largest problem in the world today? It is apparently the Reflecting Pool.”

“And why can’t he just delegate the Reflecting Pool to Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior?” Coles pondered.

“There is the question,” Wolff replied. “And the fact that he has not is an indication of something extraordinary. And, yes, possibly dementia. Possibly just a sense on his part that everything else has become beyond his control. And this is, or at least ought to be, within his control. And the fact that this, too, is not within his control is making him crazier and crazier by the moment.”

When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sent the Daily Beast a frequently recycled statement: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evening on YouTube and Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday mornings on other podcast platforms.

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