The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted sky-yacht — excuse me, temporary Air Force One — is apparently headed back to the shop to get “maxed out,” because nothing says serious national security planning like treating the presidential aircraft as a tuner car from a reality show. After weeks of questions about whether the foreign-royal-family freebie has actual missile-defense systems or just extra gold trim, Trump now says it’ll be gone for about a month for unspecified upgrades. Very reassuring that the commander in chief describes hardening against surface-to-air missiles the same way people talk about upgrading their Xbox.

The Secret Service already forced a reality check earlier this month, quietly telling him to ditch the Qatar jet and fly home from Turkey on the older, actually-battle-tested Air Force One once hostilities with Iran resumed. Publicly, Trump insisted there were no security issues, while also bragging that he’s “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran” — a sentence that really makes you want the plane to be more than a flying casino with wings.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department helpfully reminded everyone where this administration’s real priorities lie by subpoenaing four New York Times reporters who wrote about the plane’s security problems. Can’t have the public knowing their president is cruising around in a foreign-donated jumbo jet that might be long on chandeliers and short on countermeasures. The Qatar 747 was already being sold as a “flying White House at a level of luxury no one has ever seen before”; turns out the only thing getting maxed out isn’t security — it’s the corruption, the conflicts of interest, and the war on anyone who points that out.

Trump promised the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would get a "beautiful" new “American flag blue” liner that would last a century. A month later, it’s already faded toward institutional gray, the coating is peeling, algae had a brief but glorious career, and the whole thing had to be drained like a Trump casino’s last bank account. The $1.5m “simple fix” has somehow metastasized into a more than $16m faceplant on one of the country’s most iconic public spaces.

Two private contractors cashed in: Ohio-based Green Water Solutions scored $1.7m for a purification system, and Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings walked away with a $14.7m repaint-and-waterproof job whose durability apparently rivals a Wish.com patio set. As the coating disintegrated in real time, Trump and Interior secretary Doug Burgum did what this crew always does: loudly blame vandals, insist there was a mysterious "350-foot gash" no one can see, and surround the mess with a dark fence so the public can’t inspect the president’s very special version of infrastructure week.

On paper, there is an actual vandalism case: former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was charged after allegedly cutting the liner while, he says, examining the already peeling surface. Conveniently, this allows the administration to point at one guy with a knife instead of the entire procurement process, the quality of the work, or the wisdom of turning a historic reflecting pool into a garish campaign backdrop for the semiquincentennial. The result: taxpayers are out eight-figures, the reflecting pool looks like a neglected strip-mall fountain, and the only thing truly "American flag blue" is the language coming from Park Service staff who have to fix this fiasco again.

Harry Kane confirmed he played golf with U.S. President Donald Trump in Palm Beach about 18 months ago, describing the whole thing as "surreal" and, in what must have been the most politely diplomatic sentence of his career, praising Trump’s golf game. When the president of the United States invites you to his Florida money-laundering cosplay resort, you apparently say yes and hope the Secret Service doesn't tackle you in the bunker.

Trump, naturally, took to Truth Social to announce to the world that Kane is a "GREAT player!!!" and then immediately upgraded the relationship to "I played golf with him and I like him a lot"—the standard Trumpian path from total stranger to lifelong best friend in under 24 hours. Kane calls it a "unique experience"; for Trump it’s just another day turning the presidency into a cross between a fanboy meet-and-greet and a loyalty test conducted on a golf cart.

President Trump wrapped up his Turkish adventure by ditching the Qatar-donated Boeing 787 party plane and hopping onto an older Air Force One, because nothing says "stable leadership" like playing Which Plane Am I In? with the nuclear football. The move blindsided observers and immediately triggered questions about whether the older aircraft has the same communications, defense systems, and retrofits that, you know, keep the alleged leader of the free world from getting turned into in-flight confetti.

The Qatar jet, of course, is the diplomatic equivalent of a sponsored Instagram post: a "gift" from a foreign government that just happens to come with prestige, access, and a giant neon sign flashing CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Now we’re apparently alternating between the old U.S. government plane and the foreign-sugar-daddy jet like it’s a timeshare. Security protocols? Transparency? Any coherent explanation? Don’t be ridiculous — this is Trump’s America, where the president treats the presidential fleet like his personal Uber Black and the rest of us just hope the Secret Service is allowed to read the fine print.

The DC circuit just told the Trump administration that, no, it cannot duct-tape TRUMP back onto the side of the Kennedy Center while it appeals a lower court ruling. The White House was trying to undo Judge Christopher Cooper’s order that not only stripped Trump’s name off the facade and signage, but also blocked his brilliant plan to shutter the country’s flagship performing arts center for two years of “renovations” starting on 4 July. Because nothing says patriotism like boarding up the Kennedy Center on Independence Day.

Team Trump claimed that removing his name would devastate fundraising and trigger some kind of donor apocalypse, via a freshly minted “Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation” that apparently exists mostly as a legal prop. The appeals court responded with the judicial equivalent of an eye-roll, noting the administration hadn’t provided any actual evidence that donors were weeping into their checkbooks over the missing gold letters. The panel — two Obama judges and one Trump appointee from his first term — also barred the administration from pretending the new foundation will have to send money back if the building isn’t re-Trumpified.

So for now, the Kennedy Center remains merely the Kennedy Center, not a branded pop-up in the Trump property portfolio, and the administration has to keep its renovation-and-rebranding fantasy on pause. The appeal can still go forward, of course, because this White House never met a public institution it didn’t want to rename, defund, or quietly turn into a family business opportunity.

Donald Trump has discovered a new arena to corrupt: international soccer. The president personally called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to get US star Folarin Balogun’s red card overturned, because why wouldn’t the leader of a nuclear power be spending his time lobbying a Swiss sports bureaucracy about a striker’s suspension. The call worked, the red was controversially reversed, global football lost its mind, and Balogun was cleared to play against Belgium.

Then the US promptly got smoked 4–1 and crashed out of their best World Cup run in decades. Incredible work from the self-proclaimed King of Winning, who has now weaponized his loser aura across every sport he touches: the Knicks’ hot streak dies the night he shows up (and naps) at the Finals, the Commanders get obliterated in the first regular-season NFL game a president has bothered to attend in half a century, the Daytona 500 turns into a rain-delay hostage situation whenever he’s grand marshal, Europe steals the Ryder Cup on US soil with Trump front and center, and college football and MLB both have receipts from the Curse of Don.

Trump keeps telling the country, "We’re winning so much we don’t know what to do about it." The data suggest what to do is simple: keep him at least 500 miles away from any competitive event. Or, if you’re playing against a Trump-endorsed team, relax. Statistically speaking, you’ve already won.