You’re no doubt seeing the now endless run of stories about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, now beset by rubberized coating which is already peeling off and algae blooms due at least in part to a darker bottom which is absorbing more heat.

Let me note an admittedly picayune part of the story. We’ve discussed in the past Donald Trump’s penchant for creating spurious backstories to justify his various building projects. We were told last year that presidents and executive branch officials had been complaining for decades — or centuries! — about the need for a White House ballroom. “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc,” he claimed at one point. And it took him to finally create it.

Rinse and repeat: these absurd fairy tales are always part of the Trump sales job. With the Reflecting Pool it’s apparently been in crisis for the last century. Only Trump is going to be able to fix it for good.

Everyone sees these absurd stories and mostly recognizes them as such. What I wanted to highlight is the ways this seeps into a lot of coverage. So, for instance, this story in the Times reports that the manager of Trump’s Bedminster golf club apparently directed the current “repair.” But there’s this aside in there which I see in almost every report on the topic …

Today’s two-steps forward, two-steps back news from the US-Iran negotiations reminds us not only of how but also of why the period after the ‘peace deals’ or ‘memorandum(s) of understanding’ seem so hard to distinguish from what came before them – a mix of meetings, sometimes inconclusive, sometimes hastily scuttled; Trump’s occasional threats to annihilate Iran; reports of good vibes from the latest meeting.

Judged most generously, we are witnessing a very, very slow and incremental negotiation that will eventually result in some agreement but it needs to be salted with occasional ‘deals’ along the way as kind of morale boosters to keep everyone happy and energized. Less generously, the “deals” are just BS, a way to make it seem like we’re not in endless negotiations which are going nowhere. We remain in the same waiting pattern in which Trump refuses to do the things which might change situation (massive escalation) and also refuses to admit where that leaves him in (in defeat, unable to compel’s Iran’s behavior). So we remained locked in Donald Trump’s denial over a war that came entirely from his whims, enthusiasms and need to self-soothe.

I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about this email from a TPM Reader from Maine which I posted last week. It crystallized a few thoughts I had about the Maine Senate primary and politics more generally. In general, I’ve always been pretty against purity tests in politics, though the label “purity tests” somewhat prejudges the question. TPM Reader JU tells us that she didn’t rank Graham Platner first (Maine has ranked choice). But that she wasn’t disappointed that he prevailed. She also believes that most of the morality tale interpretations of what happened in the primary miss what’s driving Maine voters. It’s not that they don’t care about Platner’s baggage, or that they’ve adopted some Trumpian cynicism. They just have a different understanding of character tests in politicians mount to. (You can read the post here.)

Basically I agree with JU. But I want to abstract this out, to at least a degree, from Platner’s specific issues because I know people have strong feelings about that race and the specific accusations that were made against him. Possibly the argument I’m making is valid but I’m misapplying it to Platner. But I’m trying to articulate a more general point rather than relitigate the Platner primary.