The Reflecting Pool Theory of Government

Trump held a small business forum. He spent most of it on a pool renovation, a war, and a squirrel.

Buckle up. Trump invited small business owners to the White House for National Small Business Week and then treated them to a greatest hits compilation of every thought he’s had since approximately 2015.

The Actual Business Content (this took about 11 minutes): Tax cuts good. Regulations bad. “We eliminated 129 old regulations for every new one approved,” which he is very proud of. The “Big Beautiful Bill” has no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security, or as he insisted, “It should be called the great big, beautiful tax cut bill and regulation cut bill.” He won Nevada because of the tips thing. Kelly Loughlin from the SBA is phenomenal. Her husband Jeff is also great. Just so you know.

The Iran War Detour casually dropped between compliments to small business owners: “We did a little detour and it’s working out nicely.” Iran has “no Navy, Air Force, no anti-aircraft equipment. They have no radar. They have no nothing.” Also, “the leaders happen to be gone also.” Took care of it. Moving on.

The Venezuela Situation: “That war took us approximately 48 minutes,” apparently, and now “the people of Venezuela are really happy.” Big oil rigs coming, “hundreds of millions of barrels” headed to Houston, great relationship, vibes immaculate. Also Chris Wright took “one of the largest salary cuts in history,” so please pause for patriotic gratitude before the next hallucinated oil boom.

The Reflecting Pool Saga, which consumed a remarkable chunk of a speech ostensibly about small business: The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was going to cost “$350 million” and take “three and a half years” to fix. Trump called his pool guys. Now it’s “1.9 million versus $350 million,” one week, and painted “American flag blue” instead of what he described, with visible disgust, as “gray.” He wanted to go inspect it today, but “Secret Service was not thrilled with me standing in the middle of a pool with lots of buildings looking down.” Relatable.

Rick Harrison of Pawn Stars was there and said Trump is “going to go down as maybe the best president ever.” Trump was touched: “Wow, wow.” He noted that “5% of the shows make it, 2% of the shows make it pretty good,” and Rick’s show succeeded, which makes Rick “a champion and a winner.” This took four minutes.

The Cognitive Test Interlude: Trump has taken three cognitive tests and “aced each one of them.” No other president has taken one. He demonstrated the first question: “You have a lion, a bear, an alligator and a… squirrel. Which is the squirrel?” He assured everyone the later questions get very hard and most people in the room probably couldn’t ace it, but he wasn’t going to say that because he’s not Gavin Newsom.

The Furniture Digression: China stole North Carolina’s furniture industry. Trump said, “I used to go down there and see these people. They were artists with wood.” He’s bringing it all back: “You’re going to be again the furniture capital of the world.” This is apparently now confirmed policy, announced at a small business event, in passing, between the pool story and the award ceremony.

The Actual Award: Mark from a 3D printing company in Youngstown got Small Business Person of the Year. He seemed genuinely lovely and said he was honored “to represent the 36 million small business people” and “the hometown products industrial athletes team” he serves every day. He even mentioned that “in the last three months the PMI index has gone up three months in a row,” which was the most concrete economic data point of the entire hour.

Closing Thoughts: We’re in “the golden age of America.” The King of Saudi Arabia supposedly said America “was a dead country” 18 months ago, but now it’s “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” The stock market is at record highs despite the Iran war, which Trump finds as surprising as anyone. Also, he’s “not a senior” and feels “the same as I felt 50 years ago,” but don’t worry, “there will be a period of time when I don’t tell you that.”

Given how often Trump now brings up these cognitive tests, and given that nearly every public appearance becomes a free-range verbal Roomba bumping from Iran to squirrels to pool resurfacing, the public should see the certified results of these alleged MOCA exams. Not “I aced it,” not “the doctor said nobody’s ever done this before,” not another dramatic reenactment of identifying a squirrel. The actual results.

Frankly, the obsession is its own tell. If a public official keeps insisting he has passed the cognitive test, repeatedly, spectacularly, magnificently, that does not exactly scream “nothing to see here.”

The pattern is older than the presidency. Trump has spent decades making claims that happen to be unverifiable, grades, crowd sizes, deal values, test scores. When he says he aced three cognitive tests and no president has ever performed so magnificently under the pressure of mammal identification, the appropriate response is not applause. It is: show the paperwork.

Total time spent on topics that were not small business: approximately 47 of 68 minutes. The small business owners of America were treated to a foreign policy briefing, a pool renovation case study, and a meditation on television ratings. They applauded throughout. The pretzels, sadly, were never distributed.