Image: watson/keystone
analysis
The president’s obsession is fueling speculation that he is demented.
June 24, 2026, 2:02 p.mJune 24, 2026, 2:02 p.m
In New York’s Central Park there is a small ice rink in winter, the Wollman Rink. In the 1980s it was out of use for years because the city administration was unable to repair it. In 1986, a young real estate entrepreneur named Donald Trump took matters into his own hands, sent his construction workers on site without permission and repaired the ice rink. In doing so, he created the basis for his reputation as a doer who lets neither fussy bureaucrats nor incompetent politicians stop him from doing what common sense dictates.
The Wollman Rink in New York.Image: keystone
Four decades later there is a parallel to this story, although with a completely different outcome. Like Wollman Rink, the Reflecting Pool in Washington – a 600-meter-long artificial pond between the Lincoln Memorial and the memorial to the fallen American soldiers in World War II – is a problem that no government has yet managed to get under control.
Every summer, masses of ugly green algae spread into the one meter deep pool and deface the pond. Successive presidents have attempted to clean up the reflecting pool and failed. Not because of bureaucracy, but because of biology. To prevent the algae, the entire irrigation system would have to be replaced, a complex and expensive task.
For Trump, however, this was a staged affair, a Wollman Rink 2.0. After all, he was a real estate tycoon and it would have been laughable if this oversized swimming pool couldn’t be renovated in no time. “I’m very good at building and constructing things,” the president boasted to journalists on June 15.
At this point, it seemed that Trump could actually have repeated his Central Park journeyman act. The reflecting pool shone in the dark American blue, just as the President had wanted for the 250th birthday of the USA. But just a few days later everything was completely different: the reflecting pool had turned into a smelly, green pond in which young ducks were dying. What went wrong?
National Guard soldiers guard the Reflecting Pool.Image: keystone
The New York Times chronicled the debacle surrounding the Reflecting Pool in great detail. The president did not put the renovation contract out to tender in accordance with regulations, but instead awarded it to a company called Atlantic Industrial Coating on his own initiative. Instead of renovating the water supply, this company covered the bottom of the pond with a blue hard rubber coating for $14.7 million.
For another $1.7 million, a fellow Trump-friendly company called Green Water Solution installed – no joke – a system that pumps ozone into the water to prevent the spread of algae.
The algae were not deterred by either the hard rubber or the ozone. Within days they transformed the deep blue pond into an ugly swamp. Nature and sloppy work had thwarted Trump’s lofty plans and the president had made a terrible embarrassment of himself.
The water must now be drained a second time. It is uncertain whether the Reflecting Pool will actually shine blue on July 4th. What is certain, however, is that Trump has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the debacle. Without a shred of evidence, the president now claims it was vandals: “This was done intentionally and criminally. “Someone went to great lengths, probably in the dark of night,” he now claims.
Hunting alleged vandals: Attorney General Jeanine Pirro.Image: keystone
Six alleged vandals have already been arrested. They face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host appointed by Trump as attorney general for the District of Columbia. These are tourists who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
However, it is unlikely that these individuals will ever be charged, let alone convicted. The alleged vandalism allegations are too transparent. For Trump, however, the reflecting pool disaster could be a mini-Waterloo. His absurd excuses and his obsession with the topic – he is said to devote up to 90 percent of his working time to it – are interpreted as further evidence of his senile dementia.
You don’t have to suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to understand this thesis. In fact, people with dementia like to cling to heroic deeds from their youth and won’t let go of the topic, even if everything speaks against it.
As president, Trump currently has far more important things to do than worry about algae in an artificial pond. Peace negotiations with Iran are going badly. In a mini-insurrection, the Senate, with the votes of Republican dissenters, passed a motion calling for an end to the war. As expected, Trump reacts with childlike defiance and implausible threats.
The senile dementia speculation is given further impetus by a book by the two New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In it they describe that the mood in the White House is increasingly similar to that in the Kremlin during Stalin’s time. Trump apparently boasts that – as a golf caddy and amateur historian told him – he is more powerful than Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Joseph Stalin.
However, it is, as Randy Newman once sang, “Lonely at the Top.” Trump spends his nights alone in his bedroom, endlessly posting nonsense on his Truth Social platform and eating tons of junk food. In the morning, his wastebasket is always overflowing with “empty chip bags, chocolate bar wrappers and ice cream cartons,” according to Haberman/Swan.