Trump wanted a quick Reflecting Pool fix. Here’s how it’s fallen apart.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Apple News Today

Episode: Trump wanted a quick Reflecting Pool fix. Here’s how it’s fallen apart.
Date: August 5, 2026
Host: Gideon Resnick (in for Shumita Basu)
Podcast: Apple News Today

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Overview

This episode covers several major stories: devastating wildfires in Washington state, President Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to expedite repairs to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, major changes and fallout from SNAP (food benefit) reforms under Trump’s administration, political turmoil surrounding Ohio Congressman Max Miller, and an incident where a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon. The central theme revolves around attempts at shortcuts in governance creating unforeseen consequences—most notably highlighted by the drama surrounding the reflecting pool renovation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Devastating Wildfires in Washington State

• Multiple wildfires are burning around Spokane, called “the worst natural disaster in the city’s history” by Governor Bob Ferguson.
  • “These are neighborhoods right in the city of Spokane and these are entire neighborhoods where to look at the images. It looks like a bomb went off.”
    — John Noel, Spokane County Sheriff [01:04]
• Authorities arrested Aaron Farnacci, charged with arson for the most destructive fire. His arrest was credited to vigilant citizens.
  • “It was citizens ... being aware and willing to step up and say something. That led to the relatively quick apprehension of Mr. Farnacci.”
    — John Noel [01:51]
• Over 65,000 people evacuated, 700+ structures destroyed, but thankfully, no deaths confirmed so far.
• Fire crews from California have been called in to help and bring structured disaster management approaches.
  • “Our job is to bring process to the chaos...”
    — Deputy Chief, Santa Monica Fire Department [03:32]
• President Trump approved federal disaster funds for the region.

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2. Trump and the Reflecting Pool Drama

• The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has a long history of maintenance woes. Recent efforts to repair it under Trump’s directive were hastily executed, aiming for speed and cost savings.
  • “President Trump and his deputies thought that the reflecting pool would be a perfect example of how he could fix and improve Washington.”
    — Dan Diamond, Washington Post [05:58]
• A $14M no-bid contract was awarded for repainting and waterproofing; paint quickly started chipping, and vandalism was wrongly blamed.
• DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro (a Trump ally) dropped charges against four accused of vandalism, citing faulty installation, not vandalism, as the cause.
  • Trump harshly criticized Pirro: “Folded like an umbrella.” [Reported by Gideon Resnick, 05:16]
  • “If it turned out that the federal government was bringing charges wrongly based on bad evidence...they could have been ultimately disbarred.”
    — Dan Diamond [05:33]
• The debacle reflects larger themes about rushing federal renovations and cutting through regulatory safeguards.
  • “It is not President Trump's fault that this pool has had problems. They predated him. But what has made it hard to address is that, first, this is a historic site ... President Trump didn’t want to wait for that, so he went forward quickly.”
    — Dan Diamond [06:43]
• Trump expressed dissatisfaction with the contractor for the first time and still promises a reopening "soon," despite setbacks.

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3. SNAP Food Benefits Overhaul and Fallout

• Over 4 million people, including many children, lost federal food benefits due to “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed by Trump in July 2025.
• The bill tightened SNAP (food stamps) eligibility and expanded work requirements, causing an 11% drop in participation; Arizona saw the steepest decline.
• Food banks are now serving more people monthly than SNAP serves in some states.
  • “He says his group is distributing more food than ever, and it’s not just because people are losing their benefits. People are struggling to keep up with rising costs of groceries, gas and housing.”
    — Samantha Kaufman, relaying St. Mary’s Food Bank Pres. Milt Liu’s comments [08:22]
• USDA points to normal program fluctuations, whereas critics blame bureaucracy, new documentation requirements, and under-staffed offices for pushing people out.
  • “Even if an eligible person submits all the required information on time, if the state does not process it by the deadline, that person is automatically removed and has to start the process all over again.”
    — Sarah Naomi Bleich, former USDA official [09:59]
• States will soon bear more of the financial burden for SNAP errors; over 200 mayors have petitioned the Senate to delay or reverse some cuts.

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4. Political Turmoil: Ohio Congressman Max Miller

• Rep. Max Miller remains in his campaign despite allegations of domestic violence. He claims the accusations are false and politically motivated.
  • “...they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient, and that is a quality that the American people cherish.”
    — Max Miller [11:34]
• The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation. Trump himself reportedly expressed doubts about Miller’s candidacy.

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5. SpaceX Rocket Debris Crashes into Moon

• A large section of a SpaceX rocket from January 2025 accidentally crashed into the moon, highlighting issues of space debris.
• Rocket remnants failed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, instead drifting into lunar collision.
• SpaceX is reportedly consulting with NASA on preventing future mishaps as lunar missions ramp up.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Spokane Wildfire Response:

  • “It looks like a bomb went off...the only way to describe it.”
    — John Noel [01:04]
  • “To see [our home] be taken from us in a matter of moments is absolutely devastating. And to hear the heartbreak in his voice is something that I truly cannot even put into words.”
    — Samantha Kaufman, resident [02:37]

• On Reflecting Pool Investigation:

  • “Folded like an umbrella.”
    — President Trump, on Jeanine Pirro [05:16]
  • “If it turned out that the federal government was bringing charges wrongly based on bad evidence...that could have had real repercussions for the lawyers.”
    — Dan Diamond [05:33]

• On SNAP Cuts:

  • “He says his group is distributing more food than ever...people are struggling to keep up with rising costs.”
    — Samantha Kaufman [08:22]
  • “Even if an eligible person submits all the required information on time, if the state does not process it by the deadline, that person is automatically removed...”
    — Sarah Naomi Bleich [09:59]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Washington Wildfires: 00:05 – 03:54
• Reflecting Pool Repair Drama: 03:54 – 07:11
• SNAP Benefit Drop and Food Insecurity: 07:11 – 10:25
• Congressman Max Miller’s Scandal: 10:25 – 11:53
• SpaceX Rocket Hits Moon: 11:53 – End

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Conclusion

This episode paints a vivid picture of urgent crises and ongoing policy challenges, from natural disaster response and public infrastructure snafus to the human cost of social welfare reforms. The throughline is the risk and repercussions of rapid, politically motivated decision-making—whether combating wildfires, expediting landmark repairs, or tightening social safety nets.
For more detailed coverage and original reporting, listeners are directed to the Apple News app.

Transcript

[Gideon Resnick]

Good morning. Wildfires are raging in Washington state with no end in sight. The governor likened it to a war zone. President Trump's reflecting pool drama continues. The Washington Post explains why it's been so hard to fix.

[Dan Diamond]

The reflecting pool has been in Washington for over a century. It is highly memorable and visible. It's been in movies, it's been the backdrop for speeches, and it's also been a problem for many administrations. It's leaked, it's had algae, it has needed renovations over time, and how a

[Gideon Resnick]

piece of a wayward SpaceX rocket ended up crashing into the moon. It's Wednesday, August 5th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shmita Basu. This is Apple News. Today, Multiple wildfires are burning in Spokane, Washington and what the state's governor said could be the worst natural disaster in the city's history. Governor Bob Ferguson told CNN that entire neighborhoods have been decimated.

[John Noel]

These are neighborhoods right in the city of Spokane and these are entire neighborhoods where to look at the images. It looks like a bomb went off. It's been described by many as looking like a war zone and that is the only way to describe it. These are just neighborhoods right in the city, totally wiped out in the space of just a few hours.

[Gideon Resnick]

Authorities have charged a suspect with arson for allegedly lighting one of three wildfires causing massive damage around the state's second largest city. The suspect, 37 year old Aaron Furnace, a convicted felon, was arrested on Monday. A resident saw him kneeling and acting suspicious near the ignition point of the old trail's fire, the most destructive of the three when they noticed smoke coming from the area not long after they notified authorities. John Noel's the Spokane county sheriff praised their quick action in a press conference.

[John Noel]

This was fantastic and very quick work by everybody involved. As it happens in so many critical cases, it was citizens who were paying attention to their surroundings, being aware and willing to step up and say something. That led to the relatively quick apprehension of Mr. Farnacci.

[Gideon Resnick]

The sheriff also said they found matches and a lighter on Farnacci. He made his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon and denied setting the blaze. The fires burning across eastern Washington have forced more than 65,000 people to evacuate in recent days. At least 700 structures have been destroyed and many people have lost everything. Spokane resident Samantha Kaufman told CNN about learning from her dad that their family home was destroyed.

[Samantha Kaufman]

He's lived on that property for 30 plus years and has built it from the ground up. To see it be taken from us in a matter of moments is absolutely devastating. And to hear the heartbreak in his voice is something that I truly cannot even put into words.

[Gideon Resnick]

No deaths or injuries have been confirmed, but these fires are nowhere close to being contained, in part because first responders have been dealing with a challenging set of weather conditions. Low humidity, strong winds, and high temperatures. These same conditions exacerbated the 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, which killed dozens and destroyed thousands of properties. And some of the crews who fought those fires have been on the ground in Spokane this week. To share what they learned, NBC Los Angeles spoke with the deputy chief of the Santa Monica Fire Department. He's been leading a command post of fire crews from a high school in Spokane.

[Deputy Chief of Santa Monica Fire Department]

Our job is to bring process to the chaos and help support the local communities with resources and accountability. And California definitely leads the country and some of the natural disasters that we've had, and to that end has developed a really robust incident management team.

[Gideon Resnick]

And he praised local leaders for evacuating so many people so quickly. President Trump approved a federal disaster declaration on Tuesday, making FEMA funds available for the area. More firefighters are expected to arrive in the coming days. They got a brief break on Monday and Tuesday when the heavy winds died down. But a heat wave is projected to hit the area soon. President Trump's push to renovate the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool and to hold people accountable he claims damaged it has run into some major roadblocks in recent days. The U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. jeanine Pirro, dropped vandalism charges for four people the administration had accused of damaging the pool shortly after it was repainted. In a court filing, prosecutors said that the damage was due to flawed installation work. Contrary to Trump's claims, Pirro, one of the president's staunchest allies, has now become a target of Trump's. Speaking in the Oval Office, he harshly criticized her decision to drop the charges, saying that Pirro had, quote, folded like an umbrella.

[John Noel]

I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked.

[Gideon Resnick]

Trump later met with Pirro, and reportedly she is keeping her job for now. She's accused the Interior Department of withholding information that would have stopped the investigation earlier. Dan Diamond, a reporter with the Washington Post, told us that there could have been broader ramifications of pursuing the case

[Dan Diamond]

further if it turned out that the federal government was bringing charges wrongly based on bad evidence, bad claims, that could have had real repercussions for the lawyers involved, and they could have been ultimately disbarred. If it's true that they were prosecuting a false case.

[Gideon Resnick]

The public spat is indicative of a broader frustration that the president's attempts to renovate the pool more quickly and more cheaply than his predecessors has not gone according to plan.

[Dan Diamond]

President Trump and his deputies thought that the reflecting pool would be a perfect example of how he could fix and improve Washington. It was in the White House some weeks ago, right after the pool had been completed, where officials were boasting about it and said, this is exactly what Trump wants to do. He's going to cut through bureaucracy to do these things faster and cheaper than anyone thought possible.

[Gideon Resnick]

The pool's last significant renovation project happened during the Obama administration. It took years and cost $34 million in an effort to expedite changes. This time the administration awarded a no bid contract for over $14 million to repaint and waterproof the concrete floor in June that paint was chipping, which led to the vandalism accusations. The project was not completed by Trump's desired July 4th date.

[Dan Diamond]

It is not President Trump's fault that this pool has had problems. They predated him. But what has made it hard to address is that first, this is a historic site, and historic sites need to go through a number of reviews and discussion points before there can be a project to address them. At least that's been the normal precedent. And that has meant that past projects have sometimes taken years to address the reflecting pool. President Trump didn't want to wait for that, so he went forward quickly.

[Gideon Resnick]

For the first time on Monday, Trump seemed to suggest that he was not happy with the contractor's work. Yet he claimed without further details that the pool would reopen soon. Over 4 million people, including many children, are estimated to have lost federal food benefits since last July after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law. The legislation made some big changes to snap, the program that supports low income people and families. It cut eligibility for some and expanded work requirements. Nationally, participation dropped 11% between last July and April, according to the center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left leaning think tank, and the group says nearly every state has seen enrollments decline. The largest drop was in Arizona, where SNAP participation is roughly half the size it was a year ago with around 400,000 fewer people enrolled. NPR's Juliana Kim has been talking with people there and she reports for NPR that for the first time there are more people visiting food banks in the state every month than signed up for food stamps.

[Samantha Kaufman]

I spoke to Milt Liu, who's the president of St. Mary's Food bank, which operates across the state. He says his group is distributing more food than ever, and it's not just because people are losing their benefits. He says people are struggling to keep up with rising costs of groceries, gas and housing.

[Gideon Resnick]

States like Louisiana, Oklahoma and Florida have also seen big drops in SNAP enrollment over the last year. The Agriculture Department told NPR last month that participation in these kinds of food benefits tends to fluctuate and no single policy is responsible. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also previously asserted that the decline could be due to an improving economy. A senior policy analyst at the center on Budget and Policy Priorities told NPR that requests for more documentation to prove eligibility is jamming up some state systems. The other key change coming to SNAP is that the federal government is going to charge states a part of the cost of covering benefits if their application error rate reaches a certain number. In anticipation of that change, some states are already making adjustments that impact benefits. Sarah Naomi Bleich, a former USDA official under Presidents Obama and Biden, explained the dynamic to PBS that refers to how

[Sarah Naomi Bleich]

much a person is under or overpaid for their monthly SNAP benefits. As a result, some states like Arizona are being overzealous in their implementation of the rules, making it much harder for eligible people to obtain or maintain benefits.

[Gideon Resnick]

Bleisch said that between that and understaffed offices, the SNAP system in most states is moving more slowly than usual right

[Sarah Naomi Bleich]

now, so they lack the capacity to process all this paperwork. And so when a person is applying for the first time or recertifying or confirming their hours work to comply with the time limit, there is a 30 day deadline. Even if an eligible person submits all the required information on time, if the state does not process it by the deadline, that person is automatically removed and has to start the process all over again.

[Gideon Resnick]

And beginning in October, additional costs are going to shift from the federal government to states. Local lawmakers are asking for more time to prepare for the changes coming this fall. A bipartisan group of over 200 mayors recently sent a letter to the Senate asking them to reverse or delay some of the changes and cuts to snap. Here are a few other stories we're following. Today, law enforcement officials announced that they arrested a man carrying ammunition who also had a gun in his car on Sunday at President Trump's golf course in the Los Angeles area. He appeared to be monitoring security preparations ahead of Trump's fundraiser there last night. The AP reports that law enforcement found additional ammunition and firearms at his home. He was charged with a number of felonies and pleaded not guilty he was also ordered to stay away from the golf course and to not possess weapons. Embattled Ohio Republican Congressman Max Miller told CNN yesterday that he had no plans to end his campaign amid accusations of domestic violence against his ex wife and their daughter.

[Deputy Chief of Santa Monica Fire Department]

What the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient, and that is a quality that the American people cherish. And so for no second am I going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and baseless allegations and be pushed out of a seat I have worked so hard to represent.

[Gideon Resnick]

Miller has denied the allegations and the House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into him after he urged one. This comes as there has been increasing pressure from members of his own party. His former father in law, Ohio Senator Bernie Marino, said that Miller was not fit to serve in Congress. Axios reports that President Trump called Miller, a former staffer in his first administration, on Monday and expressed doubts about his candidacy. If Miller did decide to withdraw from the race, August 10th is the deadline for a replacement Republican to make it on the ballot in his place. And finally, a discarded section of a SpaceX rocket the size of a school bus crashed into the moon late last night. The 45 foot long, 8,000 pound rocket left over from a January 2025 launch was traveling at roughly 5,400 miles per hour when it hit the moon's Earth facing side. Now, typically, rockets like this one re enter the Earth's atmosphere after liftoff, but this one unintentionally drifted toward the moon and stayed in space among other pieces of space junk until its orbital path ended up on a collision course with the lunar surface. SpaceX says it's discussing with NASA ways to prevent future impacts as the agency moves forward with plans to return to the moon. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Bloomberg Businessweek explores how one Defense Department official wants the U.S. war machine to partner more closely with businesses, including the private equity firm that he co founded. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News plus narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.