In Trump’s bizarre, bare-chested image of him taking a swim in the Reflecting Pool alongside members of his Cabinet, there was one thing that stood out the most to Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.
“Trump seems to be obsessed with the Reflecting Pool, posting about it over two dozen times—while I will remind you, this country is at war—sometimes in the form of AI slop like this,” Oliver, 49, said on his show Sunday, “depicting Trump, JD Vance, and some Cabinet members floating in it.”
The AI-generated image, which Trump posted at 11:03 p.m. on May 1st, following a month in which he posted to Truth Social on all but five nights, depicts the president floating on a gold inflatable chair beside Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum—all shirtless and smiling—alongside an unidentifiable woman in a checkered bikini.
“That is an image in which Trump seems to have photoshopped his head onto the body of a man 50 years younger,” Oliver joked. “And yet, JD Vance being invited to a pool party is still the least realistic part about it.”
Vance, 41, depicted giving a thumbs-up in the closest position to Trump in the image, was notably left out of the president’s visit to China last week, where Trump brought along Vance’s 2028 presidential rival, Rubio, 54.
While Trump did not caption the photo, his post came just hours after vandals spray-painted the Reflecting Pool with “86 47,” slang meaning “get rid of” the 47th president.
Since April, Trump has become consumed by this latest D.C. vanity project as part of his larger America 250 capital revamp, which has hit snag after snag.
The Reflecting Pool renovations, which Trump has hastened to the point that he may be risking worker safety, have skyrocketed in cost, with the latest estimate of $13.1 million coming in more than 10x higher than the figure Trump originally told reporters, $1.8 million.
“I’m gonna call three guys who I know worked on my swimming pools,” Oliver said, mocking the president’s boast to reporters about how he found the no-bid contractor. “Come on, that is not how to fix a national memorial. It sounds more like the start of an incredible post-divorce girls’ weekend for Deborah.”
Since renovations have quickly become a catastrophe, Trump has backtracked on his involvement in sourcing the renovation work, claiming he “did not know” the contractor at all.
“Look, is this the most important thing this president could be doing right now? Of course it isn’t,” Oliver said. “That would be a tie between learning where Iran is on a map and finally listening to the three ghosts who’ve been waking him up every Christmas Eve for the last 70 years.”
“It should really go without saying,” Oliver continued, “if you are a president who’d rather focus on ballroom construction and pool maintenance than the crucial work of actually running a country, then I think it is fair to say, to borrow a phrase that I heard recently, you are not a smart f---ing person.”
