President Donald Trump on Wednesday spent nearly a full hour ranting about the new-look Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, trashing Democrats as “Dumocrats” and downplaying the sky-high inflation that his war against Iran has caused before nearly forgetting to do the one thing he’d brought reporters into the Oval Office to see.
As White House aides attempted to usher the White House press pool from the room after Trump ended the event by thanking reporters, he was reminded that he had not put pen to paper on the immigration and border funding package he’d meant to sign as top GOP congressional leaders looked on.
But when someone pointed out that he hadn’t actually signed the bill — at the signing ceremony in the Oval Office — he quickly pivoted to attacking his predecessor’s use of an autopen as he took out his bespoke Sharpie and inked a signature on the page as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso and others watched over his shoulder.
“See, Biden wouldn't do this. That's the real deal, right there.” he said.
Trump’s belated performance of one of his core constitutional duties comes just four days before he will turn 80 and celebrate by attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship event — UFC 250 — that is set to take place on the South Lawn Sunday as part of the country’s semiquincentennial celebration.
Though he often attacks Biden, his successor-turned-predecessor, on the grounds that his age rendered him too infirm and cognitively unfit to serve, Trump was actually the oldest person to begin a four-year term in the White House by a margin of 159 days.
After what described as a “six-month physical” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland last month, Trump claimed on Truth Social that “everything” had “checked out PERFECTLY” during the checkup.
He also boasted of having scored a “perfect” score on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment — a common test used to diagnose dementia — and suggested that the result indicated “extreme intelligence” even though the test does not indicate anything except whether a particular person may be suffering from a degenerative brain disorder.
Yet he has continued to face questions about his mental acuity as multiple videos have emerged showing him appearing to fall asleep during Cabinet meetings, Oval Office press conferences, and even Monday night’s NBA championship game at Madison Square Garden.
According to a poll from the Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos released last month, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe Trump lacks the mental acuity to serve as president while 55 percent say he lacks the physical health to carry out his duties.
Before Trump had to be reminded to sign the bill that was the purpose of the Oval Office signing ceremony on Wednesday, his meandering remarks only briefly touched on the legislation’s purpose — to fund immigration and border enforcement through the end of his term.
Instead, he spent most of the 50-plus minute session holding forth on a wide range of topics, starting with the update of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool that has dominated much of his public output over the last few weeks.
He appeared to forget the name of the century-old water feature, which he first called the “reflecting pond” and “reflecting lake” and claimed it “never worked” because the shallow pool “leaked” and was “a bad color” due to the gray stone that lined the bottom.
He also alleged that “11 big dumpsters full of garbage” were removed from the shallow pool, which he then claimed needed to be “fumigated.”
“Then we gave it a test, and we rinsed it out and we gave them a beautiful surface, and then they put a swimming pool topping, but industrial strength - it's industrial strength is used for tanks and lots of other thing,” Trump added.
At that point, Trump repeated a false claim that an Independence Day 2019 speech there — during which he made the ridiculous and anachronistic statement that the Continental Army had "took over the airports" from the British during the American Revolutionary War — had featured more attendees than the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s address at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Continuing on his stem-winding soliloquy, the president veered further into familiar territory by remaking on the state of the restaurant industry in Washington amid years of declining crime that he incorrectly ascribed to having taken “almost 5,000 people” out of the capital for deportation and suggested his use of National Guard soldiers there and in New Orleans would lead to a similar result in the latter city.
When it came time to finally take questions, he was asked about his remark that Tehran “will have to pay the price” for rejecting his preferred terms for a deal to end the war he started more than 100 days ago.
He replied: “We're going to be attacking them, attacking them very hard.”
Trump told reporters that the renewed attacks were due to Iran’s shooting-down of an Apache attack helicopter late last week before returning to the topic of a proposed agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.
“I've been working with Iran for a number of months, and they should sign their deal. It's a good deal. It doesn't give them the right to have a nuclear weapon. In fact, it totally prohibits them from ever having a nuclear weapon,” he said.
He added that he wants a “meaningful” agreement “that works” and compared it with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was negotiated between Tehran, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the European Union, calling that agreement “the worst deal.”
Trump’s war against Iran remains extremely unpopular with Americans according to polling which indicates that most voters blame the war — and Trump — for the skyrocketing gas prices and spiking inflation that has resulted from it.
Asked about inflation data showing that inflation remained at over 4 percent last month — far higher than when he came into office promising to curb it — he told reporters he “loves” the inflation and suggested that the war’s eventual end would cause it to plummet because the U.S. has secretly been “taking out millions of barrels of oil” from Iran.
“We took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights, because they don't have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it,” he said.
“When the war is over, it’s going to come down like a rock.”
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