As Trump launches a propaganda offensive
DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
Three weeks into the war with Iran the president’s lies are adding up, and the cracks are showing.
At the most important juncture of the Trump presidency, here’s where we are: the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, oil prices keep rising, the media is coming down hard on the president. And Donald Trump is losing the plot. He spent the wee hours of the morning raging at reporters on social media.
Hey, don’t blame the messenger. Consumers can see for themselves how badly it’s going as they watch numbers spin ever upward at the pump.
None of this will get better as long as Trump and his allies keep lying. After so many years of this shell game, why would anyone believe anything they say? Most of Trump’s lies are just fuel for his massive ego and eye-roll worthy, but a fact-free war zone is especially dangerous on a large scale.
At a time when American lives are on the line and the world economy is in peril, we need truthful information from the Trump administration. We are getting anything but.
When Trump recognizes that he is failing, he doubles down on his signature move: lie, (more than usual) and push his lackeys to lie more too. When the lying fails to budge the needle, go after the people calling out his lies, the media.
It’s a good thing Trump doesn’t play poker, because his feeble moves were on full display over the weekend.
Let’s start with Trump’s personal propaganda blasts in which he spewed a number of false and furious social media posts. In one, he claimed “about seven” countries are sending warships to the Persian Gulf to assist the U.S. military in safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz. According to Politico, none of those countries — Japan, Britain, France, South Korea, or Australia — are currently sending anything to the Gulf other than best wishes. Several countries have explicitly said no.
Trump even suggested China, Iran’s ally, should help because why should the U.S. maintain “the Hormuz Strait when it’s really there for China and many other countries.” You can practically hear them laughing in Beijing.
Since he can’t lie about the actual price of oil, he consults his notoriously inaccurate crystal ball for what will happen next. On Sunday, he told NBC News, “I think they’ll go lower than they were before, and I had them at record lows.”
One, the lowest oil prices on record did not happen during either of his terms. Two, he knows that most economists believe that there is little chance, if any, that oil prices will go down below their pre-war levels when the conflict ends.
The president said on Monday that U.S. attacks have led to a “90 percent reduction” in ballistic missile launches from Iran. Yet, also on Monday, Qatar intercepted more than a dozen such missiles.
The bellicose Secretary of Defense toed the company line. “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy… We will show no quarter for our enemies.” Either Pete Hegseth doesn’t know that “no quarter” means to take no prisoners by killing everyone, or he is committing war crimes.
Hegseth, who was always happy to play fast and loose with the truth during his time at Fox “News,” says Iran’s military is “nearing complete destruction.” So how do they keep shooting back?
Making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, Energy Secretary Chris Wright reiterated the administration’s spurious assertion of “short-term pain for long-term gain.”
“Americans are feeling it right now. Americans will feel it for a few more weeks,” Wright said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He can’t know that.
Before last week, Iran had never formally closed the Strait of Hormuz, one of the greatest risks to the global energy supply. So the worst-case scenario happened in response to Trump’s war.
You can almost set your watch by Trump’s reaction to the media coverage of his mounting fabrications. As his propaganda efforts expand and outright lies mount, so does his media-bashing.
In the last 48 hours he: accused the press of rooting against the United States; suggested media outlets “be brought up on Charges for TREASON;” called the media “pretty criminal;” accused the Wall Street Journal of running an intentionally misleading headlines (it wasn’t); and called ABC News “maybe the most corrupt news organization on the planet.”
The last was in response to tough but fair questioning by ABC’s Mariam Kahn during the press gaggle on Air Force One as Trump flew from his Florida resort to Washington on Sunday.
She asked him about the appropriateness of using a photo of himself at a dignified transfer of U.S. service members killed in Kuwait in a fundraising email. He answered with a curt yes, then asked who she was with.
She answered but didn’t cower and continued to pepper him with questions about the war. He quickly grew angry, lashing out with aggressive finger-pointing and a shush.
Trump received assists from two of his most loyal minions in war against the press.
On Saturday, Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, trampled the First Amendment while threatening television news organizations. “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” claiming that some media outlets were “running hoaxes and news distortions,” he posted on social media.
While federal law bars the FCC from using its licensing authority to censor free speech, that doesn’t mean Trump and Carr won’t try.
Over at the Pentagon, Hegseth was berating CNN for suggesting that Trump had underestimated Iran’s capability to disrupt oil routes through the Strait of Hormuz. He called the assertion “patently ridiculous.” On any given day, there were 130 ships passing through the strait. Now there are none. As Iran’s Revolutionary Guard broadcast over their ship radios, “From now on, all navigating through the Strait of Hormuz is forbidden.”
Then Hegseth openly admitted that Trump’s backing of David Ellison’s bid to buy Warner Bros., which includes CNN, was to curtail criticism. “The sooner David Ellison takes over CNN, the better,” he griped.
Prior to launching the war, the president was not forthright about the need for or the goals of the conflict. He is paying for that now with slipping support. For starters, Trump didn’t get the usual rally-round-the-flag bump presidents normally receive at the beginning of an armed conflict.
In the most recent polling, Americans object to the war by double digits, saying they feel less safe and are questioning the war’s benefits. Not to mention the war’s fatalities, including American service men and women. Nor the toll it’s having on most people’s wallets. Of course, the president claims the war is hugely popular.
Every wartime administration has sugarcoated the news, but Trump’s effort for a truth-free war is more complex and potentially life-threatening than most. Three weeks in, we know there is no quick fix and no way for Trump to lie his way out of it, as the Iranian government says it sees no reason to negotiate.
We would all like to be optimistic. Facts indicate that the outlook remains grim, at least for the moment. But they — the facts — do undercut President Trump’s propaganda offensive.
