Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, Sarah Ewall-Wice, and Laura Esposito, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
In this week’s booze from the ooze: Al Franken, Ken Paxton, Stefanie Bojar, Barack Obama, JD Vance, Elliott Jung, Larry Summers, Sharon Slater, Elena Kagan, Dan Patrick, Donald Trump, Monty Bennett, Peter Thiel, and Lindsey Graham.
Arts of War, Arts of Peace, and Trump’s Lost Art of the Deal
Donald Trump’s grand plan to give Washington a makeover is beginning to look more like a construction headache than a presidential legacy. The idea was to make the capital gleam with gold. Instead it’s moldy green and deep in the red.
First came the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has now been drained for repairs, leaving visitors staring at wire fencing and drab concrete instead of an iconic landmark.
Then came the cascading fountain at Meridian Hill Park, which took on a muddy brown hue—and then turned into a putrid shade of green—just two months after it started flowing again.
The Swamp’s Farrah Tomazin can also reveal another botched vanity project: the historic Arts of War and Arts of Peace statues, a series of giant horse-and-rider sculptures that Trump wanted to paint in 24-karat gold. Now, it’s another Trump folly that is over time and over budget.
The statues, the work of Leo Friedlander, which are meant to symbolize the nation’s journey from war to peace, sit between the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Circle, the site where Trump wants to build his giant Arc de Moi near Arlington Cemetery.
Like the Reflecting Pool, it also involved a no-bid contract. The administration awarded the work to Maryland firm The Gilders’ Studio for an initial cost of $2.8 million, and Trump promised it would be “fully regilded” by July 3, just in time for his America 250 birthday bash.
But when The Swamp visited the site on Tuesday, the statues were still hidden beneath draped scaffolding, with no public completion date in sight. And the cost? It has galloped to $5 million, and counting.
This is just one piece of a much bigger transformation of Washington. As we know, the 80-year-old president is building a new White House ballroom and a multi-level military fortress underneath it. His administration is also building a new granite helipad on the South Lawn; refurbishing 22 fountains across D.C.; redesigning Pennsylvania Avenue; and proposing a “National Garden of American Heroes” with 250 statues at West Potomac Park—one statue for every year of America’s independence. Even the grass across D.C. is getting a revamp because, as Trump often says, “grass is like people, it has a life too.”
The Swamp suggests Trump might want to study what’s going on in the statues he is gilding at great expense. They represent the peaceful virtues of harvest, music, literature and aspiration, and the warrior virtues of valor and sacrifice. Just the things you associate with the man in the White House!
Kagan Shows Why She’s Got The Gavel
Chief Justice John Roberts wants you to know that the nine justices aren’t “politicians in robes.” Perhaps he should tell Justice Elena Kagan, because on Capitol Hill Tuesday she proved an adept practitioner of the twin arts of flattery and back-stabbing. First, she smoothly sucked up to Republicans by taking time out from her testimony at the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday to pay a personal tribute to the late MAGA Senator Lindsey Graham. She pleased the Democrats by mentioning that Al Franken (who clearly knows from jokes) complimented Graham by saying he had the best sense of humor in Congress. But when she went to the Senate, the tone was rather different… When Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat listed some of Trump’s (many) insults against the Supremes, she pounced, and called him “dangerous,” and a risk to justices’ security. Apparently, those silk robes have pockets, and Kagan keeps a finely-honed shiv tucked in there just in case.
MAGA Donor’s Texas Hold’em
Monty Bennett has become a major Trump donor and one of Ken Paxton’s biggest financial backers, making him a MAGA figure of renown in Texas. Campaign finance records reviewed by The Swamp show he has contributed more than $3.2 million to Texas political candidates and their associated PACs since 2015, including $410,000 to Ken Paxton, $510,000 to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, $325,000 to Gov. Greg Abbott and $492,000 to Texans for Educational Freedom, a leading school-choice organization. Where does he get the cash? Bennett is a billionaire thanks to his Braemar Hotels & Resorts, whose portfolio has included franchises of hotels including the Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, and Hilton. But the MAGA donor’s day job is not all upgrades and turn-down service. The Swamp learns that he faces a lawsuit from his company’s major shareholder for allegedly engineering a series of hotel sales designed to trigger a payout of more than $480 million to the advisory firm Bennett controls. The shareholder, Al Shams Investments, has vowed to pursue “every available legal remedy” and hold Bennett and Braemar’s directors personally accountable, describing the transaction in a scathing letter as “one of the most brazen acts of self-dealing” it has seen at a public company. Bennet has denied wrongdoing, describing Al Sham’s attacks as “sanctimonious” and an “attempt to mislead shareholders.” Watch out, Texas Republicans, if this court case becomes a problem for Bennett, you may have to cash in those hotel points.
Trump’s Pick Is Too Biggs to Flail
Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind Andy Biggs to become Arizona’s next governor. But while the MAGA Congressman has spent years positioning himself as a darling of the religious right, The Swamp can reveal Biggs’s ties to one influential conservative group stretch far deeper than previously known—and come with deeply controversial baggage. Biggs once served as a United Nations representative for United Families International (UFI) and was a founding director of its sister organization, Family Watch International (FWI), an Arizona-based group that became a major player in Africa’s culture wars. FWI president Sharon Slater reportedly cultivated close relationships with Ugandan leaders as the country pursued some of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ laws, including legislation that made homosexuality punishable by death. Little wonder the Southern Poverty Law Center has also designated both groups as hate groups, although that probably helped their fundraising. The relationship didn’t end when Biggs entered politics in 2017. Campaign finance records reviewed by The Swamp show Biggs (whose office hasn’t responded to a request for comment) accepted $52,500 in donations from individuals connected to FWI for his Congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. Slater joined the “Women for Biggs” coalition during his 2020 campaign, and the pair shared the stage at an Arizona rally the year before. Handily for FWI, the Trump admin has dropped opposition to the antigay laws in Uganda and other African countries. As they say at FWI, go Biggs or go home.
Peter Thiel’s Unwanted Baggage
MAGA billionaire Peter Thiel should strap in for a bumpy ride: Extraordinary allegations of in-flight misconduct on his Gulfstream G550 have landed in court. The Palantir co-founder (and Antichrist alarmist) is facing a legal action from a flight attendant on board the $60 million jet who alleges Thiel’s husband Matthew Danzeisen, threw coolers, and grocery bags at her during an on-plane tantrum. The attendant, Stefanie Bojar, alleges that as she lay injured on the plane floor, Thiel himself sat and watched. The alleged meltdown happened before take-off from Sun Valley, Idaho in July 2024. It was a turbulent few days for the Thiel-Danzeisens. Thiel had been attending the annual Allen & Co. gathering of power-brokers, media tycoons and dealmakers, and got into a very public dust-up with Reid Hoffman, about his loyalty to the then-ex-president Trump.
When the Thiels, their children, and their nanny boarded their jet (which is registered to Thiel Capital), things went downhill. Bojar alleges in her lawsuit that Danzeisen became enraged that both (yes, both) bathrooms on the aircraft were filled with the family’s lavish amounts of luggage. He “deliberately hurled multiple heavy cooler bags” at her, striking her left ankle, foot, and leg before she collapsed to the floor, she alleges in court papers shared with The Swamp by her attorneys Elliott Jung and Michael Hernandez. She claims he then threw a filled grocery bag at her. And, she alleges, it wasn’t even the first in-flight tantrum. Her attorneys allege that at least two other flight attendants stopped working on the jet after “suffering similar abuse,” including one who was nearly struck with a fork by Danzeisen. This story has an incredible twist: It wasn’t Bojar who sued first. It was Thiel and Danzeisen. They have hired powerhouse attorney Alex Spiro, who went to court , to accuse Bojar of executing a shakedown on the billionaires. He tells us, “This is a shakedown about a bag that bumped into someone’s leg, and we do not pay out to shakedowns, so we will see everyone in court.” Thiel, of course, has a litigious track record, having funded the takedown of Gawker. Looks like there’s plenty for everyone to talk about at next year’s Sun Valley.
Vale to Harvard’s Slutty Professor
After crashing out as Harvard’s President in 2006, former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. “Larry” Summers was awarded a prestigious University Professorship as a consolation prize. It was a sweet gig until late 2025 when the Justice Department released a cache of personal emails between Summers and his friend and felon Jeffrey Epstein.
Predictably, Summers hit the wealthy Epstein up for money for educational projects, but, unpredictably, he also hit Epstein up for advice on how to get women–including an alleged mentee–to put out. Publicly embarrassed, Summers continued to teach until an outcry from students forced the university to sideline him. Next, he was let go from his Kennedy School leadership position. Finally, Harvard announced that Summers would relinquish his University Professorship at the end of the academic year. But a month after Harvard’s 2026 commencement, Summers remained on the list of illustrious scholars, which included Noah Feldman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cass Sunstein and Annette Gordon-Reed.
On June 30, a friend of The Swamp alerted the administration to this oversight and—voila! A week later, Summers’s name had vanished from the website. Need your Swamp drained too? Drop us a line…
