In one week, the linchpins of Donald Trump’s shady, shoddy brand collapsed. Epically.
I’ve written before about whatever Donald Trump touches failing. This week, a soccer match, a woman's dignity, a peace deal and a reflecting pool all came back broken, peeling or on fire — all disasters that collided at the same time.
"I alone can fix this"
Trump famously said, "I alone can fix it," during his July 2016 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, meaning America and presumably everything else he thinks is broken.
When Team USA's star striker, Folarin Balogun, picked up a red card and an automatic suspension at the World Cup, Trump decided that he alone could fix it. He stuck his bulbous nose into the fray and called FIFA’s groveling president, Gianni Infantino, to overturn it. He did.
That set the wheels in motion for a disaster of epic proportions. The world cried foul as if it didn’t hate Trump enough, and Belgium, Team USA’s opponent, got fired up about being screwed over by Trump.
The U.S. lost 4-1 and was eliminated in the Round of 16, and the world rejoiced. After the win, Belgium posted the score on social media with one simple phrase: "Overturn this."
Even when Trump gets exactly what he demands, the thing he wants still fails. By trying to fix the situation, literally and figuratively, Trump broke it into a million pieces.
'Grab them'
Trump infamously told Billy Bush on Access Hollywood in 2005 that he can assault women, i.e. "grab them ...” whenever he likes because he's a star. When the tape was released on Oct. 7, 2016, one month before the election, Trump's chances looked doomed. He went on to win anyway, despite dismissing it as "locker room talk."
Trump was caught red-handed on tape bragging about grabbing women without consent. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse. Dozens of other women have come forward with accusations spanning decades. None of it stopped him from winning the presidency twice.
Somewhere along the way, parts of both parties absorbed the wrong lesson: that character doesn't cost elections anymore, that voters will forgive almost anything if a candidate sounds populist enough on affordability.
Graham Platner is what happens when a party bets its Senate hopes on that theory. His campaign in Maine survived a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi SS insignia and resurfaced Reddit posts minimizing military sexual assault, and the progressive base mostly shrugged.
It did not survive a rape allegation from a former girlfriend, which Platner denies as "categorically untrue." Within hours of Politico's report, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders all called on him to step aside, days before Maine's July 13 ballot deadline. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said flatly it won't spend a dime on the race if he stays in it.
Republicans made the same bet in Texas, where Ken Paxton remains the nominee despite an impeachment, a securities fraud indictment and his own wife's divorce filing alleging adultery.
And the cherry on top came Wednesday, when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the immediate release of a $5 million jury award, plus interest, to E. Jean Carroll, rejecting Trump's attempt to delay payment after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of the 2023 civil sexual abuse and defamation verdict.
Trump’s "grab them" bad-boy image clearly doesn’t work for him, or anyone else, anymore.
'Deals are my art form'
In the introduction to the audiobook version of The Art of the Deal, Trump said, "Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals. Preferably big deals."
Well, his Iran deal, which he bragged about for weeks and cried wolf about for months, just got kicked apart like everything else Trump gets his kicks from.
Three weeks ago, Trump signed a disastrous memorandum of understanding with Iran, reopened the Strait of Hormuz and posted, "Ships of the world, start your engines." This morning, jet-lagged and cranky at the NATO summit in Ankara, he torched it.
After an exchange of strikes over the strait, Trump told reporters he believes the ceasefire is "over," called Iran's leadership "cuckoo" and "evil, sick people," and added: "I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum."
Oil prices jumped within minutes. Tankers are turning back mid-transit in the Strait. Roughly 6,000 sailors remain stranded in the Gulf, according to the International Maritime Organization.
A deal Trump called "complete" on Truth Social lasted three weeks before he blew it up with a slur from a podium in Turkey.
If deals are his "art form," then he presumably has his own exhibit at the Museum of Bad Art.
"I build better than anybody else. Nobody can build like me."
During a November 2025 Ingraham Angle interview on Fox News while touring his White House renovations, Trump said, "I build better than anybody else. Nobody can build like me"
Which brings us to the truly epic embarrassment of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Trump ordered it repainted "American flag blue" ahead of the country's 250th birthday, steered the work through no-bid contracts and personally drove his motorcade through the half-finished project to inspect it.
Within days of being refilled, the paint was peeling and algae had bloomed so badly that National Park Service crews were dumping hydrogen peroxide into a national monument by the bottle.
Trump blamed vandals. He's right. The vandal was Trump.
But on Sunday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the company previously hired to restore the reflecting pool will also handle the repairs.
So the expert builder is hiring the company that botched the whole thing to fix it?
Perhaps the reflecting pool belongs in the "fix it" section. Then again, maybe all of these stories do. Trump can't fix anything or do a damn thing right. What a cuckoo.