Todd Blanche backs Jeanine Pirro after Lincoln Memorial pool vandalism case dismissal

A judge tossed the Lincoln Memorial vandalism case and instead of pretending that's a nothing story, Todd Blanche just went ahead and said the quiet part out loud: the president is annoyed, and he backed Jeanine Pirro anyway. That's actually more useful than the usual Washington shrug. You don't have to love every outcome to think the person running the office is doing the job well.

Because here's the thing people keep skipping past: prosecutors lose cases. Judges dismiss them for reasons that have nothing to do with effort or intent. Someone spray-painted a national monument, a case got built, and it didn't survive court. That's not corruption, that's how the system is supposed to work when it's working. If Blanche had come out and torched Pirro to smooth over Trump's frustration, that would be the actual scandal, not this.

What's refreshing is the plain talk. No spin that the dismissal was secretly a win, no pretending the boss is thrilled when he isn't. Just an honest accounting: the case didn't hold, the AG still thinks his U.S. Attorney is doing strong work, and the president can be irritated about a specific outcome without that irritation becoming policy. That's a healthier dynamic than the alternative, where every legal loss turns into a loyalty test and every prosecutor becomes disposable the moment a case falls apart.

The vandalism itself shouldn't get lost either. Defacing the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial is the kind of thing that used to draw universal condemnation regardless of politics. If the charges couldn't stick, that's worth asking hard questions about, but the answer isn't to torch the prosecutor. It's to figure out what went wrong and fix it for next time.