Ever since he intemperately attacked Iran over three months ago, Donald Trump’s every prognostication about the war has commanded major news headlines.

Whether he is declaring victory, threatening annihilation, or insisting that a peace deal is two or three days away -- all of which he has done, in succession, many times now -- his words are splashed across the top of news pages everywhere.

But pretty much every time, those words have turned out to be meaningless. So those headlines served to deceive the public rather than inform it.

The headlines today were particularly head-snapping. In the morning, they were all “Trump says US will hit Iran ‘very hard,’ take control of energy infrastructure.” But by early afternoon, they were all “Trump cancels US strikes in Iran and suggests agreement is close.”

Whether it was another example of “Trump Always Chickens Out,” or another bout of wishful thinking, or just plain brain rot, we don’t yet know.

But it should be clearer than ever to newsroom leaders that Trump says whatever he feels like saying, with little or no connection to reality or to what comes next.

So it’s not really news anymore. In fact, it’s bullshit.

And it doesn’t belong in the top headlines anymore.

The top headlines should be about what is actually happening, not what he says will happen. You know, headlines about real things, like “Analysis of Satellite Image and Videos Suggest Precision U.S. Strikes on Iranian Water Facility” or “Delhi issues ‘strong protest’ after US strikes kill three Indian seafarers in Gulf.” Those articles, not Trump’s latest Truth Social post, deserve the lead spots on our news home pages and front pages.

And you know who best understands just how full of bull Trump’s statements are? The reporters who cover him. Occasionally, the truth leaks out of them, like in this not-long-for-this-world paragraph in the New York Times’s “live” coverage on Wednesday:

As Mr. Trump alternates between promising peace and threatening to return to full-scale war, neither is happening. Instead, the situation is as bewildering as ever, the two sides seeming to agree on nothing, prolonging the turmoil in the Middle East and leaving it unclear how or when the war will end.

(The first sentence made it to this article, but the rest of the paragraph did not.)

Most top publications have run at least one news analysis about how meaningless Trump’s words about Iran are. See: “Trump’s statements on Iran increasingly contradict each other”(Washington Post, April 29); or “Trump administration sows confusion as it tries to reopen Strait of Hormuz” (Associated Press, May 6); or “Trump Threatens Iran and Then Pulls Back, All in the Same Day” (May 16).

But they continue to churn out credulously stenographic daily stories anyway.

What’s particularly loony about headlining Trump’s statements is that actual reporting -- you know, the stuff that real journalism is based on -- doesn’t back them up. Most of the time, nobody -- or at least nobody credible -- can confirm what Trump is saying. Iranian officials often deny it. So the reporters end up just quoting from Trump’s Truth Social posts and then riffing on them.

That’s what happened today between 8:22 a.m. and 1:22 p.m.

At 8:22, Trump posted that “The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT.” He also predicted a land invasion of Kharg Island.)

Then at 1:22 p.m. all bets were off: “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening…. Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.”

This of course was coming from the same guy who posted almost three months ago that “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”

(That would have been a war crime, by the way.)

More recently, over the Memorial Day weekend, Trump had the entire mainstream news apparatus lunging like Charlie Brown after Lucy’s football when he posted a statement on Saturday afternoon declaring imminent peace, once again. (“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” he wrote.) The resulting headlines: “Trump Says Peace Deal Is Near”; “Trump says Iran ceasefire deal in final stages, to be ‘announced shortly’”; and so on.

I say: Enough already. Trump’s statements should be quoted, sure, but with plenty of disclaimers.

Reserve the headlines for things we know to be true.

Also from Press Watch:

• “What changed Trump’s mind on Iran? Who the hell knows?“ (April 10)

• “Acknowledging Trump’s derangement is the first step“ (April 7)

• “The war makes it more urgent for journalists to call out Trump’s derangement“ (March 10)

For nearly two weeks now, protesters have been trying to call attention to what’s going on inside Delaney Hall, a privately-run prison in Newark where immigrants – some of whom are on a hunger and labor strike – are being held without legal recourse in inhumane conditions.

But what little national coverage there has been of Delaney Hall has focused mostly on what’s going on outside, instead. And as if that weren’t bad enough, most journalists got the story completely wrong.

Our leading news outlets almost without exception described what was going on outside over the last two weeks as protesters “clashing” with police. They regurgitated preposterous official government statements. Their reporters either weren’t there, or they left when someone in a uniform told them to.

The best way to figure out what was really going on was to watch the livestreamed coverage from independent outlets Status Coup News, BG on the Scene, and Mercado Media.

And what was really going on outside Delaney Hall was that government authorities – first ICE, and then, shockingly, the New Jersey State Police under the control of a Democratic governor – engaged in violence against almost entirely peaceful protesters. They violated the First Amendment rights of people upset that human beings who did nothing illegal are being held without due process and being fed maggots.

(I’m writing this in the past tense because Newark Police took the lead role on Monday, and the past two nights have been free of violence.)

During the first week of protests, ICE agents routinely responded to isolated incidents – such as protesters blocking vehicles – with melee tactics, wantonly shooting people in the face with pepper spray, lobbing tear gas grenades, and wildly swinging their batons at demonstrators.

On Friday evening, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill sent the State Police to take over from ICE agents, precisely because she recognized that they were the aggressors.

“We’ve seen increasing violence, arrests, and pepper spray at Delaney Hall, as well as public threats from the Trump administration. And we’ve seen the risk to public safety rising outside of Delaney Hall,” she said. “It has grown unsafe and that’s completely unacceptable.”

She later explained: “They used batons, they used rubber bullets and measures that we felt like were escalating in violence. We saw I think someone being beaten by an ICE agent. That is not how we conduct our policing. This is not a law enforcement agency we want on our streets in any way.”

By contrast, Sherrill announced on Friday that troopers would establish “peaceful” protest zones to “protect” demonstrators.

But within hours of their arrival on Friday night, state troopers in riot gear and on horseback were firing tear gas and shooting pepper spray at protesters.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport on Saturday blamed the violence on a “limited number” of protesters who refused to clear a pathway for vehicles, then “took dangerous actions, including deploying fireworks and throwing gas canisters at law enforcement, that put everyone in harm’s way.”

But protesters challenged that narrative, NJ.com reported, “alleging the state immediately went after the entire protest, including an area for water and medical supplies.”

Indeed, there were no “gas canisters” for protesters to throw (or kick) until after the troopers started using them. And there were no confirmed reports of fireworks.

The ACLU of New Jersey on Saturday called the state police’s actions “an unnecessary response to free speech and the right to peaceful protest” and said the state should “not mimic the dangerous and overly militarized tactics of the federal government.”

On Saturday night, Sherrill made a further mockery of her own “peaceful protest zones,” as state troopers in riot gear fired tear gas at protesters and pushed them more than half a mile away from the facility.

The single most overt violation of protesters’ First Amendment rights ended up coming from an unexpected source: Newark’s progressive Mayor Ras Baraka, the outspoken critic of Delaney Hall who a year ago was himself arrested in the facility’s parking lot on bogus trespassing charges. Early on Sunday, he announced a curfew for the area around the hall, effectively banning protest from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

When the curfew began on Sunday night, several dozen protesters chose to remain – entirely peacefully. They were confronted by several hundred state troopers in riot gear, who shot at least two people with rubber bullets, kettled the protesters, and eventually arrested 61 people, including at least two credentialed photojournalists. The “clashes” were entirely one-sided.

The attorney general then sent out a preposterous statement, blaming protesters for putting the public “at risk” because some of them “had come to the protest armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks.” Yes, she used the word “armed.”

The AP, the Guardian, and CBS all used that quote straight -- with no disclaimer of any kind.

And yes, despite the entirely peaceful nature of the protesters’ conduct on Sunday, none of the coverage I saw correctly identified the aggressors. CBS reported that “protesters and New Jersey State Police clashed again Sunday night.” And the Guardian declared: “Several protesters arrested at New Jersey ICE facility as clashes continue.”

Baraka, on Monday, called the state police tactics over the weekend “overly aggressive, unnecessary and in some cases, unconstitutional.” He sent Newark Police officers – notably not in riot gear or on horseback -- to take over from the state troopers. And as a result, Monday night was peaceful.

On Tuesday, he lifted the curfew. And Tuesday night was peaceful.

There’s a lesson there.

Look, I’m not saying that all the protesters behaved perfectly. One protester was charged with kicking and biting ICE officers on Thursday; another faces federal charges after he threatened to murder an ICE officer and his family on Wednesday, after the ICE officer hit him with a baton.

On Friday night, someone dropped a cinderblock on the windshield of an ICE vehicle. On Saturday night, something – possibly a flash-bang grenade – set off a fire in a roadway, and protesters stoked it. There was a lot of ugly smack talk.

But it was ICE that escalated, just as Sherrill said. And then it was Sherrill’s state troopers who donned riot gear and were overly aggressive, as Baraka said.

The coverage should have reflected that. (The coverage should also have explored the bizarre phenomenon of Democratic state officials decrying ICE but then doing their dirty work for them.)

And the coverage should have focused on what was really at stake.

As I wrote last June, reporters covering any protest shouldn’t obsess over clashes and arrests. They shouldn’t rely on what government officials tell them. They should listen to the protesters, and tell us why they’re there and what they want.

In this case, as I wrote last week, journalists should be using the protests as way of exploring and exposing the maltreatment of immigration detainees. Indeed, as I wrote in February, reporters have failed to raise essential questions such as: Why does someone who isn’t a flight risk need to be indefinitely confined in a filthy overcrowded cell?

When protesters engage in violence, reporters should specify if it was aimed at property or at people. They should ask: Was law enforcement’s use of force proportional? What were the rules of engagement? Did they use “less than lethal” weaponry in a responsible or irresponsible manner? Reporters should talk to victims about what they were doing before they were injured.

And they should recognize that heavily armed and armored law enforcement officers are often the cause of violence, not a response to it.

The pavement outside the Delaney immigrant detention center in Newark, N.J., has become the front line of the resistance against the brutality and cruelty of the Trump regime.

What’s happening there deserves more coverage than it’s getting from our major news organizations.

National news outlets should be on the ground, filing daily reports, while their colleagues use the events there as an urgent and dynamic news peg to explore and expose both the maltreatment of immigration detainees – especially in privately-run facilities – and the government’s violent crackdown on protesters.

Inside the center, immigrants – who did nothing to deserve this – are on a hunger and labor strike protesting inhumane conditions and the denial of their due process rights. As I wrote in February, it’s a moral imperative for American journalists to ask questions like these:

Why does someone who overstayed their visa need to be held in shackles? Why does someone who isn’t a flight risk need to be indefinitely confined in a filthy overcrowded cell? Does any child belong in a prison camp? Does anybody at all deserve to be forced to sleep on a concrete floor, or underfed, or brutalized, or denied medical care?

Outside Delaney, enraged federal agents who hide their faces are increasingly using batons and pepper spray to assault protesters who have been holding a round-the-clock vigil for seven days, exercising their free-speech rights and committing civil disobedience by blocking ICE vehicles.

Why is ICE responding with such furious violence? Consider some of the imagery from the scene, like this shot, of a masked, baton-wielding ICE agent kicking a protester into the wheels of a moving tractor-trailer. (Here’s the video.) Why so much pepper spray? Look at the rage of these agents as they chase and beat protesters, furiously swinging their batons. This is just plain brawling.

Why has ICE turned the parking lot into a war zone? Who is telling them to do this? Who in the government will go on the record saying it’s appropriate? In a normal time, with a functioning Justice Department, wouldn’t these agents be ordered to stop – and prosecuted if they didn’t?

Why did Senator Andy Kim, approaching ICE agents with his hands raised in an attempt to de-escalate a face-off, end up in a cloud of pepper spray instead?

The parking lot also offers journalists a chance to see and share the humanity of the people being held in detention by speaking to their family members. Like this woman, who described phone calls from her husband in which he spoke of inmates being beaten and gassed. Or like this 10-year-old girl whose father is a detainee. “If they’re such big and bad,” she said, pointing at ICE agents, “why don’t they just take theirs masks off?”

Of course it matters how the conflict is covered, too.

One can report from the government’s point of view, focusing on arrests and blaming the violence on protesters. See, on Good Morning America, Aaron Katersky reporting that “protesters clashed again overnight with federal officers.”

Or one can report objectively, like Duarte Geraldino did for New York’s PIX11 News, explaining that “ICE agents pushed some of the demonstrators. The demonstrators stood up for themselves and before you knew it, things quickly went out of control.”

It’s also essential not to treat DHS as a credible source of information. As I wrote back in November:

Time after time, official statements from DHS — including ICE and the Border Patrol — have turned out to be malicious fabrications, often intended to blame the victims for their own brutality.

For a model of coverage, watch Democracy Now!, which led with the Delaney story this morning. The segment included a long clip of Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, speaking outside the hall. Here’s what he said:

DHS is retaliating against people for exercising those constitutional rights. People shouldn’t have to starve themselves to make their dignity known. And not only is DHS illegally violating due process for those who are detained, they’re also illegally obstructing elected officials from gaining access to the facility, and they’re violating the Constitution for people outside by brutalizing protesters who dare to exercise their constitutional rights.

Their response to the very real issues that people are facing inside and the very real constitutional rights that people are trying to exercise outside is not to solve the problems. It’s to suppress them. It’s to brutalize people. It’s to use more force and it’s to endanger lives.

They are the ones who are escalating the situation. This entire administration is operating with illegality. The cruelty is the point.

Amy Goodman also interviewed newly sworn-in Rep. Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, who spoke of her commitment “to ensure the decent treatment of human beings that are being detained, many of which do not have criminal records.” Mejia said:

Many of the individuals that I’ve spoken to within Delaney Hall were following the law. They were attempting to go to a court-appointed date with ICE agents. They were attempting to check in and then they were detained. I spoke to a 19-year-old girl who went to a detention center to visit a friend believing that because of her protected status that she would be all right and then she was detained at the end of that visit.

Mejia also confirmed reports that guards inside the center had assaulted detainees last night using pepper spray.

The New York Times does appear to have a free-lancer on the scene, finally. Its latest article started in the passive voice: “Violent clashes between demonstrators and federal agents erupted early on Friday,” it said. But having a reporter on the scene matters. Here’s the secong paragraph:

Just past midnight, about 50 activists convened in front of about 30 federal agents. A group of officers charged into the crowd, and several protesters were pushed to the ground as officers sprayed a chemical irritant. One officer beat a demonstrator with a baton across the torso, thighs, knee and calves as he tried to flee. Three protesters were arrested, restrained with zip ties and carried past a razor-wire fence into the detention center.

The Times also quoted Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, who said state health officials were denied access to the facility. She called for Delaney to be shut down and said the protesters have been peaceful.

“What seems to really be inciting a lot of this are really the ICE agents,” she said.

Any thinking journalist is aware by now that when Donald Trump says something – especially about the war in Iran – it may or may not be true. (And probably isn’t.)

This has been well documented. Consider the April 29 Washington Post article headlined: “Trump’s statements on Iran increasingly contradict each other,” or the May 6 Associated Press article headlined “Trump administration sows confusion as it tries to reopen Strait of Hormuz,” or the May 18 New York Times article headlined “Trump Threatens Iran and Then Pulls Back, All in the Same Day.”

So why in the hell did we spend the whole Memorial Day weekend being pummeled by news headlines about Trump’s Iran “deal”?

Trump posted a typically undependable statement on Saturday afternoon, full of weasel words. “An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization,” he wrote. “Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” he wrote, adding: “the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”

What did our top journalist do? Did they respond with skepticism? Did they push back? Did they demand evidence? Did they warn their readers that Trump has zero credibility on this issue? (To be clear: The man has been saying the war would be over “very soon” for going on two months now.)

No. This is what they did:

• NYT: “Trump Says Peace Deal Is Near.”

• WaPo: “Trump says Iran ceasefire deal in final stages, to be ‘announced shortly’”

• CNN: “Trump says agreement with Iran has ‘been largely negotiated’ and Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”

• AP: “Trump says a deal with Iran and opening of Strait of Hormuz are ‘largely negotiated’

Where was anything remotely like a warning to readers that he might be full of it? I found them in places like the 14^th paragraph, the 18^th paragraph, and the fifth paragraph. It was entirely missing from the Post story.

As the weekend progressed, the coverage became a bit more skeptical. It had to, as Iranian officials confirmed essentially none of Trump’s claims, describing a very different emerging agreement than the one anonymous U.S. officials outlined. The only actual points of agreement appear to be that they are punting the tricky bits until later and that the Strait of Hormuz may be reopened soonish under unspecified conditions.

But even as days passed, with lots more headlines, readers weren’t being told the truth.

What did the Wall Street Journal do when it realized that there was no sign of an actual agreement on the most contentious issues? It published an article on Monday headlined: “Iran Talks Bog Down Over Nuclear Program and Sanctions Relief.”

And to add insult to injury, most news organizations treated as serious Trump’s deranged demand that, as part of making peace with Iran, every country in the region must join the Abraham Accords -- which would entail making peace with Israel.

Reporters enthusiastically tried to match and beat an Axios article which, notably, reported that when Trump announced his demand on a Saturday phone call with the leaders of eight countries in the region, there was dead silence on the phone. “Trump joked and asked if they are still there,” a U.S. official told Axios’s Barak Ravid.

“I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords,” Trump ranted on social media on Monday. And yet the Times treated the idea respectfully, noting that it was “unlikely” that any country would agree, but in no way even hinting that the idea is utterly insane.

When the U.S. launched military strikes against targets in southern Iran on Monday, too many news organizations credulously quoted officials who called them “self defense.”

What’s so frustrating about the coverage this weekend is the Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy’s-football nature of the whole thing. How many times will reporters fall for this stuff? How many times must we go through this? It’s painful. Or as Charlie Brown would say: “AAUGHH!”

By now it should be clear that Trump’s assertions about the war in themselves mean nothing. Reporters should demand evidence before broadcasting them. And the coverage should reflect the reality that Trump is saying things that may or may not be true, and that he might contradict himself at any moment.

That’s not the stuff of a sidebar. And a warning to readers that Trump’s statement cannot be taken at face value shouldn’t be in the 14^th, or 8^th, fifth, or even second paragraph of the main story. That is the main story.

So how should Trump’s statements have been covered? I have some ideas:

• “Trump’s Claim that Iran Deal Is Imminent Raises Familiar Doubts”

• “Trump Makes a Vague New Claim About Iran”

• “Trump Makes a Dubious Claim About a Peace ‘Deal’ in Iran”

• “Trump Makes New Promises About Ending the War”

• “For Third (Fourth? Fifth? Sixth?) Time, Trump Says Strait of Hormuz Will Open Soon”

My message to our major newsrooms is simple: Have some self-respect.

The stunning collapse of a politically-motivated prosecution in Chicago, which came after a judge discovered that Justice Department lawyers had engaged in gross misconduct to secure a grand jury indictment, ought to be an inflection point for coverage of Trump’s DOJ.

The Chicago case makes for an extraordinary read. The “Broadview Six” were initially indicted on felony conspiracy charges for protesting outside an ICE facility. But all charges were dropped on Thursday after Judge April Perry saw a grand jury transcript that prosecutors had resisted turning over to her.

It contained numerous examples of misconduct, including a prosecutor personally “vouching” about the strength of the case. The defendants are now asking the judge to order prosecutors to preserve records of all their communications. It’s basically a huge mess and a vindication of the suspicion that prosecutors, under pressure from Washington, are abusing their power.

So how should this change news media coverage going forward?

Historically, charges emerging from federal grand jury proceedings have been seen to carry a certain amount of credibility. The presumption by reporters, and by the general public, has been that the prosecutor was acting in good faith and had presented clear evidence under a reasonable legal theory sufficient to persuade a bunch of ordinary citizens that the person was probably guilty -- in short, that prosecutors had a serious case.

That presumption, to use a legal phrase, is now moot.

So from this point on, reporters should treat grand jury indictments – particularly in political cases -- with great skepticism.

The thrust of their news articles – including their headlines – should be that the Justice Department has made a decision to go after the defendant, not that prosecutors have overcome any sort of significant legal hurdle. (“Justice Department goes after James Comey for seashell photo” rather than “Comey indicted on charges of communicating threats”.)

Reporters should also explain that grand juries have historically been highly susceptible to prosecution arguments – ergo their reputation as “rubber stamps” and the origin of the saying that “a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”

Reporters should provide background about Trump’s reforging of the Justice Department into a tool of retribution that routinely launches bogus investigations and prosecutions of people who have opposed him. They should note that prosecutors are under intense pressure to please the White House.

A rare bit of reassuring news is that grand juries still maintain the ability to reject – or “no bill” -- a prosecutor’s case when it’s clearly nuts. That used to be extremely rare, but has become almost common in the Trump era, like the case of the sandwich guy, or the pursuit of six congressional Democrats who reminded servicemembers of their duty to refuse illegal orders, or several other failed attempts to indict protesters in Chicago.

So what explains the grand juries that went along with felony charge of conspiracy against independent journalist Don Lemon for covering a church protest? Or with charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center – a prominent civil rights organization – for wire fraud and money laundering for paying informants within the KKK and neo-Nazi groups? Or with the communicating-threats charges against Comey, for the seashells?

Given what happened in Chicago, reporters would actually be remiss if they didn’t raise the distinct possibility of grand jury manipulation – of conduct that goes beyond the legal and ethical rules prosecutors are supposed to follow.

And there’s another lesson from the Chicago case: Defense lawyers – and journalists – should demand and expect that the judges in these cases request a full transcript of the entire grand jury proceedings, and report back on any irregularities.

“I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury,” Judge Perry said during a hearing Thursday morning, according to a transcript. “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

And she told the defendants: “We all took the government attorneys’ word on a great many things. I, at the time, was operating on a presumption of regular grand jury proceedings, which these were very clearly not. So based upon what I’ve seen in the grand jury transcripts, the calculus has changed and it has changed considerably. So I also think you are entitled to a briefing and perhaps a hearing on the issue of vindictive prosecution should you choose to raise it.”

There was no “weaponization” of the Biden Justice Department. There are no “victims” who deserve “compensation”. The $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund the Trump administration announced on Monday is not a legal “settlement” of Trump’s risible lawsuit against his own IRS.

Everything about this heist of tax dollars is a lie and a fraud. In its scope and its shamelessness, it is arguably the most staggeringly corrupt act this country has ever seen. It is a screaming red alert for democracy, a sign of the debasement and decline of our government to banana-republic levels.

From a journalistic perspective, this is all crucial context. What Trump did on Monday can’t just be announced, using the administration’s deceitful language. It must be explained. It must be identified as aberrational. Anything short of that is misinformation. It abets complacency.

And yet our major news outlets on Monday shied away from bluntly confronting their readers and viewers, choosing instead the lazy, deceptive route of using Trumpian terms in their headlines and leads, only later countered by “critics.”

Their headlines repeatedly described the deal as “unusual” – arguably the weakest adjective they could possibly have used.

In some cases – particularly at the New York Times web site – editors pooh-poohed the whole story, letting it fall almost entirely off the home page within a few hours.

The biggest news on Monday -- and it was very big news indeed -- was not DOJ’s deceitful announcement itself, but what it signified. The headlines should have reflected that. Something like:

• “New Trump $1.8 billion ‘slush fund’ called corrupt and illegal”

• “Trump’s new $1.8 billion fund could reward insurrectionists with tax dollars”

• “‘Staggering corruption’ alleged as Trump gives himself $1.8 billion to enrich supporters”

• Or this one, which appeared in The Times (of London): “Trump ‘creates $1.8bn slush fund to reward allies’”

There Was No Weaponization

My dear editor friends: You can’t let Trump describe something as an “anti-weaponization fund” -- even in quote marks -- without declaring loudly and clearly that the alleged “weaponization” was in fact the application of justice, involving guilty pleas and searing jury verdicts -- and that it is Trump who has weaponized the Justice Department by using bogus investigations and failed prosecutions to punish people who stood up to him.

And yet the Wall Street Journal headlined its article: “Justice Department Creates Unusual $1.8 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’.”

The Washington Post, which for a while embraced the passive voice -- “In unusual deal, a $1.8 billion fund that could help Trump allies is created” -- eventually settled on “Trump’s deal to drop suit against IRS creates $1.8B ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’.”

NBC headlined its coverage “DOJ sets up $1.7B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund after Trump drops IRS lawsuit.” CBS said: “Trump settles IRS lawsuit, sets up $1.7B fund for claims of ‘weaponization’.”

There Was No Settlement

Earlier Monday morning, Trump dropped his lawsuit against his own IRS – and its laughable $10 billion demand – amid signs that Judge Kathleen M. Williams was going to throw it out because Trump couldn’t sue himself.

Notably, there was no “settlement” in the case. To be clear: “There is no settlement of record,” Judge Williams wrote on Monday afternoon.

Trump’s flunkies at the Justice Department and the IRS tried to frame it as a settlement – even drafting something that looked like one. But legally, the two moves were unrelated: First Trump dropped the case. Then the Justice Department announced the new fund.

Nevertheless, journalists who should have known better embraced the Trump narrative, with its attempt to give the move a patina of legality.

NPR’s coverage was particularly naïve. “Judge dismisses Trump’s IRS lawsuit, paving the way for a settlement,” Carrie Johnson reported.

“DOJ rolls out nearly $1.8B ‘anti-weaponization fund’ as part of Trump’s IRS settlement,” Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Danny Nguyen reported stenographically. Like many other outlets, Politico quoted Todd Blanche – Trump’s former defense lawyer, now acting attorney general – without any pushback:

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said in a statement.

The gall!

“DOJ offering $1.776 billion ‘lawfare’ fund to settle Trump IRS lawsuit,” proclaimed USA Today.

“Justice Department announces nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit,” the Associated Press announced -- as if there were something to “compensate” anyone for.

Presumptively Illegal

The deal should also have been treated by news organizations as presumptively illegal – like most every other major policy move Trump has made. In this particular case, it’s even more obvious than usual. Nothing like this has ever been done before. And the stipulations clearly violate the congressional intent behind DOJ’s settlement fund: the $1.8 billion is to be deposited into a separate account, then distributed by a hand-picked board with almost no limits and no oversight; also, it it to be liquidated before Trump leaves office.

It will surely be challenged in court, and when judge after judge declares it illegal, the legacy media will act surprised.

Even the Best Wasn’t Good Enough

The New York Times, which for some reason buried its coverage online, eventually published an article that went atop the print edition, headlined: “Justice Dept. Sets Up $1.8 Billion Fund That Could Funnel Money to Trump Allies.”

The article included a fair amount of context, including a fourth paragraph quote from Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”

But the overall format was still: Here’s what the Trump people said; here’s the alternate view. Here’s how they led the story:

The Trump administration announced on Monday the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats, forging a pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to President Trump’s allies.

What the readers deserved was the “truth sandwich” instead. Something like:

In what experts called an unparalleled act of corruption, the Trump administration announced on Monday the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to funnel taxpayer money to Trump supporters who have falsely claimed that they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats.

And where are the news analyses? Where are the second-day stories, raising a legion of concerns?

The New York Times does get credit for a second-day story of sorts, by Andrew Duehren, revealing the existence of an internal memo in which IRS lawyers cited a number of weaknesses in Trump’s lawsuit and urged the Justice Department to get it thrown out of court. But Duehren’s descriptions of the fund itself are anemic.

And Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported on a wild, sweeping one-page document posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday, which states that the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.

The only strong news analysis I saw in the major legacy news outlets was by CNN’s Stephen Collinson, headlined “Trump’s compensation plan is a metaphor for a brazen presidency.” It was sadly confined to beyond CNN’s new paywall. Collinson wrote:

President Donald Trump’s new $1.776 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration is the kind of scheme that might once have irrevocably stained a presidency.

Yet Trump has spent years shattering ethical expectations surrounding his office. His brazen leadership has long shed the power to shock.

Still, the plan, announced by the Justice Department on Monday and denounced by critics as a slush fund, is a study of his political project in microcosm.

On a personal level, I found the coverage of this travesty pretty damn depressing.

If our news organizations are incapable of conveying to the public how extraordinarily and alarmingly corrupt it is for Trump to take $1.8 billion in tax dollars and put it into a slush fund for people willing to break the law for him, well, I just don’t know what the point of it all is.

States across the South are redrawing election maps to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts.

Much of the major-media coverage is casting this in purely political terms – as just another element of the partisan battle for the House in November.

So for example, a May 9 Associated Press article headlined “What to know about the latest wave of changes to congressional districts,” started off this way:

The remaking of the U.S. political map accelerated this week in courts and legislatures, all of it in this round expected to boost Republicans in their attempt to keep control of Congress in November’s elections.

A May 13 New York Times article started off like this:

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on Wednesday called lawmakers back to the capital next month to redraw the state’s legislative districts for the 2028 election cycle, and to work on changes to the state’s voting system.

The call for a special session, which will begin on June 17, comes as Southern lawmakers have been rushing to reconfigure congressional maps to be more favorable to Republicans for this year’s midterms in response to the recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But in the South, the significance of redistricting goes far beyond any partisan issue.

So let me rewrite that for you:

In a stunning display of racism, white Republican leaders throughout the South are stripping Black people of their franchise in order to retain political power.

The catalyst was a 6-3 Supreme Court decision on April 29 that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, landmark legislation that gave Black people the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Six right-wing justices insisted that intentional voting discrimination is a thing of the past. Southern legislators immediately responded by redrawing election boundaries to dilute the Black vote, in many cases making it virtually impossible for Black people to be elected to Congress.

What has happened in a matter of days amounts to a wrenching reversal of 60 years of racial progress -- a revival of the Jim Crow era when Black people had no political power, no matter their number.

On a personal level, Black voters in the South are struggling with the repercussions of having one of their essential rights being brutally ripped away from them.

In states like Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where they make up more than 30 percent of the population, Black Americans will have little to no say in who is elected to Congress. And as the effects of the court decision trickle down to the local level, they may get shut out of some of those elections as well.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the white nationalist movement known as MAGA are celebrating. In some cases, their racism is expressed openly. “For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee posted on social media.

For the authoritarian leaders of MAGA, the dilution and nullification of Black votes is a crucial step in their quest to remain in power -- even as most voters have turned against them.

MAGA’s future depends on suppressing the votes of groups that don’t support its white-male dominated Christian nationalist ideology. Reducing minority representation, to them, is essential to destroying majority rule. Destroying Majority rule is how they win.

Gerrymandering that leads to Southern states being almost entirely represented by white, right-wing elected officials dramatically improves MAGA’s political calculus. In the short run, it improves the odds of retaining Congress in November. MAGA’ strategy to keep the White House in 2028 includes yet more Black disenfranchisement, through voter intimidation, deception and disruption.

So far, MAGA’s plan is working, raising the prospect that Trump and his successors may remain in power for the foreseeable future.

But another way to characterize the current drive to disenfranchise Black voters is that it is the desperate – and maybe final -- act of a white nationalist party that is being rejected by increasing number of voters.

For American journalists, this ought to be epic, tectonic stuff, worth aggressive and ongoing coverage.

And keep in mind that in the mid- to late-20th century, the struggle for civil rights was the dominant story in American politics, the subject of vast amount of journalism, some of it heroic. Ultimately it was journalism that brought the civil rights marchers into the American public’s breakfast nooks and living rooms, forcing the country to reckon with a brutal and sordid history of racism, and, eventually, try to move beyond it.

But today, as in the early days of the civil rights movement, too much of the media is averting its eyes from the experience of Black people. Too much coverage treats this extraordinary and consequential display of racism and societal regression as if it were just an ordinary political battle.

Some Reporters Get It

Some mainstream journalists have recognized the racial element of redistricting, and their work provides models of better, more appropriate coverage.

As evidence that you can address both the racial and political nature of the Republican moves in a news article, consider Emily Cochrane’s reporting in the Times about a new Tennessee map “that slices up Memphis to scatter Black voters into neighboring districts, a move intended to eliminate the state’s last Democratic House seat.” After several paragraphs of partisan framing, she wrote:

Democrats, noting that about two-thirds of Memphis voters are Black, said it was a blatant attack on hard-won gains for fair representation in a state shaped by slavery, segregation and the civil rights movement.

She described the scene in the state capitol in Nashville during the special session to pass the new map:

Black lawmakers delivered emotional speeches about family members, friends and colleagues who endured segregation or struggled with barriers to voting in the 1960s. State Senator Charlane Oliver of Nashville, a Democrat, stood on her desk right before the vote, holding a banner reading “No Jim Crow 2.”

And she quoted an attendee:

“My race is who I am and it informs my politics,” said Danyelle Norment, 30, who woke up early to drive in from Memphis. “It’s not something that’s separate or can be left behind.”

She added, “it’s really, really important to have folks who can understand our lived experience.”

In the Washington Post, Justin Jouvenal profiled Press Robinson, an 88-year-old civil rights pioneer. “That law passed in 1965 was the bedrock of improvement of life in America for people of color,” Robinson told Jouvenal.

Now, Robinson fears a wipeout of Black political power, much like the one that occurred after Reconstruction.

“History is now repeating itself,” he said.

On PBS Newshour, Liz Landers covered the story as part of the network’s “Race Matters” series, bringing us the voice of Leona Tate, a civil rights activist:

So now we move backwards with the Supreme Court decision that will go down as one of the most racist rulings in our nation’s history.

Tate was 6 years old when she became one of the first students to desegregate a New Orleans school, Landers noted. Then Tate continued:

I had no idea what racism was at that time, but I knew by third grade that it was the color of my skin that made a difference. I just can’t believe that it’s still happening 66 years later. It’s cheating, to me. That’s how I feel. It’s really cheating. And it’s really illegal.

It does bring back that feeling from a long time ago, and it’s not a good feeling.

Read the Black Press

As in the 1950s and 60s, the Black press is revealing what the white press is slow to acknowledge.

Brandon Tensley, writing for Capital B, explained “How One Supreme Court Ruling Is Rewriting 60 Years of Voting Protections.” “Most Black Americans reside in the South,” he wrote. Lawmakers in former slaveholding states dismantling majority-Black districts “could change the balance of power and the complexion of leadership in this country.”

Gerren Keith Gaynor, writing for TheGrio, headlined the fact that “Black legislators lead the resistance as Republicans rush to redraw maps after gutting of Voting Rights Act.” “It’s disturbing and disgusting to see how this administration and the white leadership here are trying to codify white supremacy and dilute Black political voting power because that’s what’s happening,” Tennessee State Rep. Justin J. Pearson told Gaynor. “I think none of us should make any mistake about what is going on. The attempt to remove Black representation and our ability to elect representatives of our choice is one of the most significant attacks on Black voter participation and Black voter representation since the end of Reconstruction.”

TheRoot published a viral video of Louisiana resident Marshan Camese delivering a powerful speech at a state Senate hearing over redistricting. “I believe the country as a whole is rebuking your party. Y’all are in a death spiral,” he said. “That’s why y’all have to redistrict. That’s why y’all have to cheat.” MAGA, he said, “is the last breath of the Confederacy.”

Civil rights leaders are headed to Alabama tomorrow for a rally they’re calling “All Roads Lead to the South.” As I wrote in my Heads Up News newsletter this week, this could be the birth of a movement that combines the battle for voting rights with the battle for democracy.

“Black folks from across the country are gonna be busing in, flying in, to show up and to really begin organizing to turn out in the November election,” Wisdom Cole, the Senior National Director of Advocacy for the NAACP, told TheRoot. “This is such an important moment to activate all of us.”

A recent post on Bluesky (where you should follow me) reminded me that it was about this time eight years ago that the Washington Post published an unusual and memorable paragraph, the likes of which has not been seen since.

It ran in an article about new evidence that Trump had been lying when he denied knowing about the $130,000 he paid adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to hush up about their reportedly “brief” sexual encounter.

The eighth paragraph is the memorable one:

The episode was just the latest convulsion for a White House that perpetually navigates turbulence, careening from one crisis to another, most of them of the president’s own making. It has become standard operating procedure for Trump and his aides to deceive the public with false statements and shifting accounts.

It’s that second sentence that really stood out for me. I hailed it on Twitter and called for it to become a routine disclaimer.

I mean, why not, right? It’s a statement of fact. It’s short. It’s essential context every time Trump and his aides open their mouths.

How hard is it, really?

Well, too hard, apparently.

Now it’s eight years later, and I don’t recall seeing anything like it again – not in the Post, the New York Times, or in any other major mainstream news outlet.

Anyway, this got me thinking about the value of disclaimers: simple but straightforward acknowledgments of the special circumstances in which we find ourselves with Donald Trump as our president.

What other things – besides the fact that he lies all the time – is it essential for reporters to clearly state to readers so that they may fully understand what is really going on? So that they are not deceived? And, I might add, for political journalists to earn back their trust?

What boilerplate information can reporters provide to their readers to explain not just “what” Trump says or does, but “why”?

I’ve tried to come up with some examples. In many cases, I cribbed language directly from news analyses the Times and the Post have published, but seem to forget in their daily reportage.

Please suggest edits and additions, either in comments or to me directly at froomkin@presswatchers.org.

Not of Sound Mind

When journalists write about Trump saying or posting bizarre, contradictory, and unrealistic things – which he does every day, almost all day long – they should not cast each thing as an isolated incident, or try to sanewash what he says by making it sound reasonable. I think it’s essential to include a disclaimer about his state of mind. Something like:

Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments, wild threats, and abrupt reversals have led a growing number of experts and observers to conclude that he is mentally ill and unfit for the presidency.

(Source: “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate,” New York Times, April 13, 2026. See also “The war makes it more urgent for journalists to call out Trump’s derangement,” Press Watch, March 10, 2026.)

Incipient Fascism

When Trump perverts the Department of Justice into a tool to prosecute his enemies, or attacks the press, or sends troops into our cities, or tries to change voting rules, it’s all coming from the same place. I think it’s essential to include a disclaimer about his attempts to replace democracy with autocracy. I propose:

Trump’s tactics fit a disturbing global pattern of autocratic behavior: seizing unprecedented executive power, using law enforcement for personal retribution, punishing or rewarding media companies depending on their allegiances, controlling information, and curbing science. He is also trying to make it impossible for Republicans to lose elections.

(Source: “Threatening Broadcasters, Trump Takes a Page From the World’s Autocrats,” New York Times, September 19, 2025; “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” New York Times, August 3, 2025; “Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science, New York Times, August 31, 2025. See also: “We have become an authoritarian state, and our top newsrooms are in denial,” Press Watch, August 3, 2025.)

Racist to the Core

When journalists write about Trump’s immigration policies, his attacks on diversity, his racist comments, his attempts to erase Black history, and his insults directed at people of color, they shouldn’t cover up for him. I think it’s essential to include a disclaimer about his lifelong racism and belief in white supremacy:

Trump came to office by stoking white resentment and his hostility toward Black and brown people has animated his entire political life. He frequently embraces white supremacist rhetoric and policies, casting white people as victims, and treating nonwhites as invaders.

(Sources: “Trump Casts Himself as a Protector of Persecuted White People,” New York Times, May 21, 2025; “Trump Says He Is the ‘Least Racist’ President. But His Term Echoes a Grim Past.” New York Times, March 1, 2026; Administration Social Media Posts Echo White Supremacist Messaging, New York Times, January 27, 2026. See also: “You can’t cover Washington accurately and not mention white supremacy,” Press Watch, October 16, 2025.)

Omnipresent Corruption

When journalists write about Trump and crypto, or about Jared Kushner’s role in the Middle East, or about Trump’s use of his own properties, or his line of personal products, or his selling of access, they should connect the dots. I think it’s essential to include a disclaimer about the enormous magnitude of the corruption and self-dealing in his second term:

Trump has engaged in a corrupt moneymaking campaign like none in modern American history. His pay-to-play politics have enriched his family as well as important officials and business partners, all in plain sight. His family’s crypto empire is now its most lucrative venture.

(Source: “Trump’s Tangled Web of Deal-Making, Policy and Riches,” New York Times, December 31, 2025; “Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches.” New York Times, September 15, 2025.)

A Criminal Enterprise

When journalists write about pretty much any new policy initiative, or Trump’s conduct as commander in chief, they shouldn’t leave the impression that what he’s doing is legal. I think it’s essential to include a disclaimer about the endemic lawbreaking in his administration.

Trump’s second presidency has been defined by his conviction that he can disregard the law. He has ordered the military to engage in actions that have historically been considered war crimes, has arbitrarily defunded Congressionally mandated programs, has encouraged federal law enforcement to ignore basic civil rights, has fired government employees despite their legal protections, and has extorted universities and law firms.

(Source: “Trump brushes aside courts’ attempts to limit his power,” Washington Post, April 17, 2025; “Trump’s Iran Threats Look Like Self-Incrimination for Potential War Crimes,” New York Times, April 7, 2026.” See also: “The Trump regime should be covered as a criminal enterprise,” Press Watch, April 22, 2025.)

Stop Hiding the ‘Why’

These – and other -- disclaimers would serve the news media well.

For one thing, it’s good journalism. To the extent that news outlets are trying to fully inform the electorate, situating Trump’s behavior among these broad themes is essential to understanding his day-to-day conduct.

It would also start earning back respect and trust from readers. The most common response I get to my writing, here and on Bluesky, is from readers who insist that because our top political journalists refuse to state the obvious in their daily reporting, they are either stupid or compromised by their owners’ allegiances.

What these readers want is journalism that is more clear-eyed and honest about Trump’s lunacy and extremism. (See: “New York Times editor Joe Kahn misunderstands what the readers want,” Press Watch, December 9, 2025.)

I don’t agree that our most prominent political journalists are stupid or compromised by their ownership (at least not directly).

I think they operate inside corporate cultures where the path of least resistance when it comes to Trump is to report on the “what” and leave the “why” to others – it’s too complicated, it’s too alarmist, it looks too much like “taking sides,” it’s too likely to upset my editor.

But at some point, newsroom leaders have to realize they are selling their readers and viewers short by not putting what Trump says and does in its proper context. Using clear, simple, honest disclaimers would be a great first step in that direction.

Donald Trump and the nation’s top political journalists are in an abusive relationship.

He lies to them constantly, insults them, sues them, calls them traitors, tries to turn the public against them, gaslights them, bans them, and threatens their outlets with dissolution.

And they almost never fight back.

Indeed, they actually cover up for him.

Relentlessly driven by their corporate masters to “not take sides,” they sanewash and normalize him, no matter what he says or does. Even their most critical reporting pulls punches -- and is quickly forgotten.

Most significantly, they refuse to level with their readers and viewers about who Trump really is. You cannot adequately explain what Trump says or does on a day-to-day basis without acknowledging where it all comes from: His derangement, his ignorance, his authoritarianism, his lawbreaking, his corruption, and his racism.

By not sounding the alarm over the dangers he poses to the country and the world, our top news organizations are enabling him. They are doing what he wants them to do.

And now, the most conclusive proof that the mainstream media is Trump’s enabler is only hours away.

That’s when many of the biggest names in news will gather for what is ostensibly a celebration of the First Amendment -- and will listen respectfully as the most vitriolic and powerful enemy of the free press in all of U.S. history lies to them and calls them names.

They will be props as he takes his victory lap.

And consider this: In a Truth Social post accepting his invitation in March, Trump wrote that despite having boycotted the dinner during his first term, he would attend this year because “these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many.”

So yeah, those are now the conditions under which you attend. You good with that?

Just Don’t Go

To be clear: No self-respecting journalist should attend Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump should play to a mostly empty room.

I know of two news organizations that aren’t attending.

The New York Times hasn’t been to a dinner since 2008. “It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable,” former editor Dean Baquet explained.

Huffpost is boycotting this year on account of Trump. “The idea of raising a glass to the power of journalism with him is at once ridiculous and embarrassing. Count us out,” wrote editor-in-chief Whitney Snyder.

My message to people with a ticket to dinner: Be like them.

Interview him, sure. But applaud him? Never.

And it’s not even that much of a sacrifice! The dinner may be the centerpiece of the weekend, but it has spawned dozens of exorbitant parties that stretch from Thursday to Sunday – pre-parties, after-parties, during-parties, dinners, brunches, and intimate soirées. (See this list from, surprise, Axios.)

The dinner itself is actually the least enjoyable part of the weekend. The room is too crowded. The food is meh. And this time around, you’ll be asked to toast a would-be dictator who treats you like shit.

So Much Wrong, for So Long

The WHCA dinner has been an embarrassment for decades, loudly advertising the coziness between the journalism elites and the people they are supposed to be holding accountable.

I have in the past referred to it as “an orgy of self-congratulation.” It’s the sine qua non of what I have called “The Infernal Cocktail Party Corruption of Washington’s Elite Media.”

The tradition is for the president to gently poke fun at the media and himself, then end with a solemn appreciation of the press’s essential role in our democracy. After that, a comedian gently roasts the president and the media.

The most notable departure from all that gentility came in 2006, when Stephen Colbert – then in his alter ego as a bombastic right-wing talk-show host – delivered an indictment of pretty much all the people in the room. It’s still a must-watch.

It came in the wake of the mainstream media’s abject failure to challenge George W. Bush as he led the country to war in Iran based on lies. Here’s a sample:

But listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: The president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type -- just put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you’ve got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration, you know, fiction.

I was one of the few people in the room who loved it. Most everyone else hated it.

Since then, the association has put comedians on a short leash. But even that wasn’t enough this year. The entertainment on Saturday will be provided – fittingly enough -- by a con man: Oz Pearlman, a “mentalist” whose act is about fooling people into thinking he reads minds.

And according to the Daily Beast, Trump doesn’t even intend to stick around for that, anyway.

What Else Could Journalists Do?

Bill Scher, the politics editor of the Washington Monthly, called for the dinner to be canceled outright, arguing that “to go forward with the WHCD without any public naming of Trump’s free speech violations is whitewashing, making these correspondents accessories to his constitutional crimes.”

There was never any chance that the leadership of the correspondents’ association would do that, however. That high priesthood of access journalism still doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it.

“We cover the White House,” association president and CBS reporter Weijia Jiang told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “And when you cover any subject, you want to be around your subject.”

Trump is rarely a captive audience, and Jiang could theoretically take advantage of that and lecture him about freedom of the press, call him out for his war against it, and maybe give some examples.

Several major news groups and over 300 veteran journalist demanded in an open letter last week that the association “forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

They called for “a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.”

(The letter, as well as a post by Matt Gertz at Media Matters for America, list many of the innumerable ways Trump has assaulted freedom of the press.)

Zach Goldberg, a comms guy, even wrote a speech for Jiang to deliver: “Since George Washington, our leaders have understood that while the press may be a thorn in their side, its independence is a hallmark of our democracy,” she would say. “In contrast to past presidents, however, you have responded to journalists doing their job by questioning, dismissing, and going so far as to undermine a free and independent press.”

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel told “some of the jokes a comedian might do if our president wasn’t a trembling drama queen afraid of comedy.” For example: “Stephen Miller is so racist, the reason he went bald is because his hair was black... He’s like if baby Hitler traveled in time to kill us.” Here’s the video.

But the correspondents association is made up of people who believe their prestige comes from Trump and his staff talking to them. They prize access above all else, and consider themselves morally superior to activists and partisans because they rise above politics. I can’t imagine them doing anything that would make Trump angry.

The only organized opposition appears to be the donning of pocket squares and pins supporting the First Amendment. That’s beyond pathetic.

So what happens when Trump starts talking? The Daily Beast reports that he is looking for revenge, and “is expected to target publications that he has accused of writing negatively about his administration and his war with Iran, in particular.”

Should journalists walk out?

A “high-profile Washington journalist” told Status News’s Oliver Darcy that “If he starts attacking us, I think it is a fair question as to what the appropriate response is. Obviously some people will want to walk out, but the question about such a thing is: does that not give him exactly what he wants, making us the opposition, not the Fourth Estate? Making us the story instead of the journalists covering the story? And, suggesting that we can dish it out but we can’t take it? And so I don’t think there is any easy answer.”

My view is that walking out wouldn’t change a thing. Trump already has exactly what he wants.

The only thing at this point that would send the right message is a nearly empty room.

Three cheers for Peter Baker and the New York Times for finally writing and publishing the article a lot of us have been calling for.

Well, maybe two cheers. I’ll explain in a bit.

But first, let’s take a few moments to appreciate the article headlined “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate” (gift link).

Its subhead reads: “As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as ‘lunatic’ and ‘clearly insane.’”

In the article, Baker concludes that Trump’s various statements over the past week “have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.”

He writes that “the president’s eruptions have raised questions about America’s leadership in a time of war.”

He writes that “never in modern times has the stability of a president been so publicly and forensically debated — and with such profound consequences.”

He notes that the concerns about Trump’s mental health are coming not just from “partisans on the left, late-night comics or mental health professionals” but from “retired generals, diplomats and foreign officials,” as well as former staffers and far-right former allies.

He quotes a wide range of people calling him “clearly insane,” “an extremely sick person,” “unhinged,” “out of control,” “batshit crazy,” and “a genocidal lunatic.”

Given the extraordinary influence of the New York Times, this article may have been just what the industry was waiting for, opening the floodgates of honest – and troubling – reportage about a topic they have spent over a decade sanewashing and covering up.

Or Maybe Not

Then again, it may amount to little or nothing.

Case in point: Peter Baker and the New York Times wrote and published a not entirely dissimilar article in October 2024, headlined: “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age” (gift link). In it, Baker wrote that Trump “has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately.”

It didn’t actually use the words “dementia” – or “insane” or “batshit crazy” – but boy did I get ahead of my skis on that one. “New York Times opens the media floodgates on stories about Trump’s mental unfitness,” I wrote.

Wrong!

Instead, it became what newsrooms call a one-and-done. There was no follow-up. Incremental stories made no reference to its conclusions. Within a few days, both inside the New York Times newsroom and out, it was like it had never run.

So that’s my No. 1 concern with this latest article: that it will be quickly forgotten; confined to the ash heap of Washington political journalism.

By contrast, Peter Baker and the New York Times -- and every other major news organization -- should follow it up with aggressive reporting about what this means to the nation and the world.

What now? What next?

As I wrote last week, once a news organization acknowledges that the president is – or even may be – insane, they are also acknowledging that this is an extremely dangerous situation. That obliges them to start aggressively and constantly reporting on what can be done about it – even if there appears to be no political will to do so at the moment. It’s an imperative.

What we also need – as I begged for shortly before the election, when it really could have done some good – is a “Cronkite moment,” where trusted voices in news turn to the camera, or the internet, and declare that Trump is self-evidently unfit for office.

And in the meantime, every incremental news story about something Trump does or says that is abnormal – which is almost everything he does or says – ought to be accompanied by a statement about his mental instability.

Because that is really what explains Trump. Most immediately, it explains why we’re at war, and why he makes it worse and worse all the time.

Why are we at war? Who the hell knows? He doesn’t think like a normal person.

Other Things Wrong With the Article

If I had been Baker’s editor, I would have sent this draft back for revisions, and the article would have had a different headline.

Trump’s behavior doesn’t “raise” or “turbocharge” a “debate”. It sounds an alarm. It is a huge and troubling issue.

I would have asked him not equate the “crazy-like-a-fox” view with the “just-plain-crazy” view. Yes, Trump’s defenders make the “crazy-like-a-fox” argument, but they don’t have the evidence to back it up.

I would have told him to make it clearer that Trump’s recent appalling behavior – vowing to destroy a civilization, posting a meme of himself as Jesus – is extreme, but not out of character.

I would have suggested he move up the part about Trump posting a meme of himself as Jesus -- performing a miracle, no less! -- and note that it was widely seen as blasphemous as well as demented.

I would have had him point out that enthusiastically endorsing war crimes is – in and of itself -- a clear sign of moral derangement.

I would have recommended he add a paragraph or two about how consistently Trump projects his character defects onto his political enemies.

I would have asked him to interview some mental health professionals, to better describe Trump’s condition and address what would normally be done about someone with his diagnosis.

I might even have suggested that in the paragraph about how “Trump’s stability has been a recurring issue since he first sought the presidency in 2016,” he acknowledge that mainstream reporters have historically not been comfortable writing about it.

And then, yeah, I would have told him: You are not done with this story. This is one of the biggest political stories of all time. It’s your beat now. Own it.

Donald Trump changed his mind about something monumental on Tuesday, and we don’t know why.

Despite all the vaunted access that journalists have to Trump and his aides, despite the endless social media posts, we can’t answer that crucial question.

And, as I will argue below, the biggest reason we don’t know why Trump did what he did is that Trump is mentally unbalanced. It could have been anything, really. But our top political journalists are too cowed to say so.

A Timeline

It certainly wasn’t what the White House is saying: That Iran caved because of Trump’s threats.

Consider the sequence of events:

As of 8:06 a.m. Tuesday, Trump was promising, in unspeakably evil terms, to turn Iran’s civilian infrastructure – and maybe more – to rubble.

He infamously posted on his social media platform that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” There was only one way out: if “something revolutionarily wonderful” happened before his 8 p.m. deadline.

For context, this came two days after his Easter Sunday post: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

In his April 1 address to the nation, he warned that “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”

His March 6 vow that “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” was still operative.

Indeed, at Monday morning’s Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn, in comments to reporters that I don’t think have gotten enough attention, Trump made it clear what he still felt Iran needed to do:

I hate to do it, but we’re obliterating and they just don’t want to say uncle. They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, uncle, but they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges, they’ll have no power plants, they’ll have no anything. I won’t -- I won’t go further, because there are other things that are worse than those two, and we might have -- well, the thing -- if I had my choice, what would I like to do, take the oil.

He acknowledged that the Iranians had made a move

They’ve made a proposal, and it’s a significant proposal. It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step. They have made -- they’re negotiating now, and they’ve made a very significant step. We’ll see what happens.

So what was that Iranian proposal?

It was Iran’s 10-point plan! The exact same proposal that Trump the next night – Tuesday night -- would call “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” The exact same proposal that he sounded ecstatic about when he posted: “This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”

As the New York Times reported on Monday:

Iran has conveyed to Pakistan its own proposal to end the war consisting of 10 points, according to Iranian state media. The state news agency IRNA indicated the proposal was made after “the developments over Saturday and Sunday in western and central Iran,” which it described as the “catastrophic failure” of a U.S. operation. An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down by Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky mission on Saturday.

Iranian state media has not detailed the entirety of the proposal, but it has noted some conditions or topics that were included. Among them, it said, was a protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. It also outlined Iranian demands for lifting sanctions and for reconstruction.

So what happened during the day Tuesday that changed Trump’s mind? It wasn’t the receipt of the 10-point plan. That was on Monday. It wasn’t that Iran cried uncle.

We don’t know what it was.

The White House’s Lies

The sequence I just described clearly refutes the White House line -- echoed by some credulous Washington journalists -- that it was Trump’s apocalyptic threats that brought Iran to make a “workable” proposal, and that’s why he changed his mind.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it on Wednesday: “I think it was a very, very strong threat from the president of the United States that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz… It was a very strong threat that led to results, and as the Secretary of War stated at the Pentagon this morning, it was not an empty threat by any means.”

Influential reporters like David Sanger of the New York Times bought it: “Mr. Trump’s tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels certainly helped him find an offramp he had been seeking for weeks,” Sanger wrote on Wednesday. “Without question, it was a down-to-the-wire tactical victory.”

Isaac Arnsdorf wrote for the Washington Post on Wednesday that “Tuesday’s ultimatum that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight,’ … yielded a two-week ceasefire in Iran and an assurance that the country’s leaders would let oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.”

An Associated Press article on Wednesday headlined “How Trump went from threatening Iran’s annihilation to agreeing to a 2-week ceasefire with Tehran“ failed to deliver as advertised, concluding weakly that “The dramatic shift in tenor came as intermediaries led by Pakistan worked feverishly to head off a further escalation.”

Even Al Jazeera, attempting to explain the U-turn it described as “‘Stone Age’ to ‘Golden Age’,” vaguely credited the reversal to “last‑minute diplomacy mediated by Pakistan” -- the only evidence of which was a tweet from Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, begging Trump to extend his deadline for two weeks on account of unspecified “diplomatic efforts.”

And let’s be real: Iran doesn’t appear to have made any concessions at all since Trump impulsively started the war on Feb. 28.

Iran’s 10-point plan – that, again, Iran put forth on Monday, not Tuesday --actually seems if anything broader and more demanding than the 5-point plan Iran advanced earlier in the war.

It specifies, for instance, that the U.S. will accept an Iranian right to enrich uranium, and that Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz.

It could barely be more diametrically opposite to the 15-point plan the Trump administration put together in late March, which included a ban on enrichment and a free and open Strait of Hormuz.

And, as I’ve made clear, Iran certainly didn’t make any concessions regarding its plan on Tuesday.

So what changed Trump’s mind?

The Journalistic Problem

This is a perfect example of the central problem with the way our top news organizations cover Trump.

They report what Trump says or does, and maybe they explain that it’s not true, or not rational.

But they don’t give their audience an explanation of why Trump is doing it. That’s because the why is often: because he’s mentally unwell. The why is “who the hell knows?”

There are other important underlying explanations for why Trump does what he does, and the elite media is so afraid of “taking sides” it won’t publicly acknowledge those, either: Namely, he’s a fascist, he’s corrupt, and he’s racist.

But the fact that he’s deranged is really the most significant one.

He does not have good judgment. In fact, he has the opposite. His thought process is characterized by impulsiveness, shortsightedness, wishful thinking, bias, recklessness, and an inability to weigh consequences.

That said, there is still often a precipitating factor for his poor decisions.

And amazingly enough, journalists generally don’t probe those, either.

Given that the Iranians didn’t change their position, and given that Trump is unstable, what pushed him over the edge on Tuesday? There are lots of questions journalists should be asking:

• Did he suddenly conclude the war was too big a political liability? If so, why did that just hit him on Tuesday?

• Was he just bluffing? And did he finally conclude on Tuesday that the Iranians weren’t going to budge? (Why on Tuesday?)

• Did he just flinch? Was it another impulsive and fearful TACO moment?

• Did he regret his earlier threats? Was there a moment of clarity?

• Was it after talking to someone in particular?

• Did someone persuade him that he had won, and should declare victory?

• Did someone tell him he had gone too far?

• Did someone mislead him about what was in Iran’s 10-point plan? (If so, did they do so intentionally?)

The American public deserves to know. And so does the rest of the world.

Some Things, We Know

Journalists need to be more up front about what they know about Trump.

They know, for instance, why he posted “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards.”

At Monday’s press briefing, one lone, heroic member of the White House press corps -- Danny Kemp, a British reporter for the Paris-based AFP -- had the guts to raise the possibility that Trump himself was the crazy bastard. It went like this:

Kemp: You called yesterday in your Truth Social you called the Iranians crazy bastards.

Trump: True.

Kemp: Um, what is your response to critics who say that --

Trump: -- I don’t care about critics.

Kemp: What is your response to critics who say that it is your mental health that should perhaps be examined as this war continues?

Trump: I haven’t heard that but if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people like me…..

They also know that Trump doesn’t understand what he agreed to – or, for that matter, what he says day to day.

ABC White House correspondent Jon Karl posted on Wednesday:

This morning, I asked President Trump if he’s okay with the Iranians charging a toll for all ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz, he told me there may be a Joint US-Iran venture to charge tolls: “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people.” “It’s a beautiful thing”

Trump posted on Thursday:

There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!

How hard is it to write that Trump appears confused about what he agreed to? Too hard for the Washington press corps.

The Plan, the Plan!

Compare Iran’s 10-point plan with Trump’s 15-point plan. Here is Iran’s – which need I remind you was put forth on Monday?:

1. A guarantee of nonaggression

2. Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz

3. Accepting an Iranian right to enrich uranium

4. Lifting of all primary sanctions

5. Lifting of all secondary sanctions

6. Termination of all Security Council resolutions

7. Termination of all IAEA Board of Governors resolutions

8. Payment of reparations to Iran

9. Withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region

10. Cease-fires on all fronts, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon

Here, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news via the Times of Israel, are 14 of Trump’s 15 items:

1. Iran must dismantle its existing nuclear capabilities.

2. Iran must commit never to pursue nuclear weapons.

3. There will be no uranium enrichment on Iranian territory.

4. Iran must hand its stockpile of some 450 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent to the International Atomic Energy Agency in the near future, in a timetable to be agreed.

5. The Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo nuclear facilities must be dismantled.

6. The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, must be granted full access, transparency and oversight inside Iran.

7. Iran must abandon its regional proxy “paradigm.”

8. Iran must cease the funding, direction and arming of its regional proxies.

9. The Strait of Hormuz must remain open and function as a free maritime corridor.

10. Iran’s missile program must be limited in both range and quantity, with specific thresholds to be determined at a later stage.

11. Any future use of missiles would be restricted to self-defense.

12. Iran would receive a full lifting of sanctions imposed by the international community.

13. The US would assist Iran in advancing its civilian nuclear program, including electricity generation at the Bushehr nuclear plant.

14. The so-called “snapback” mechanism, which allows for the automatic reimposition of sanctions if Iran fails to comply, would be removed.

How do you reconcile those?

Well, the answer is that one element of Trump’s erratic mental state is that he doesn’t think ahead.

So it’s anyone’s guess. And the stakes are still incredibly high.

Best case scenario right now: Trump is deranged.

Because it’s either that or he’s stone-cold evil. Or both.

Our country’s news organizations can no longer afford to beat around the bush about this. An entire civilization lies in the balance.

I’ve written several times before about the urgent need to clearly identify Donald Trump as a deranged person, rather than as a normal president. My main argument is that when news organizations don’t explicitly explain that to their audiences, they are leaving out a crucial part of the story without which isolated incidents don’t make any sense at all.

And now it’s more urgent than ever. He is threatening to order the military to commit catastrophic war crimes.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote this morning.

That is sick. And sickening. No rational, feeling human being would say something so vile.

But let’s say the news organizations do as I suggest. Let’s say they start to stipulate in their articles and newscasts that Trump, by almost any standard you can think of, is a seriously deranged man.

How does that change what they do?

It changes everything! Because now they are acknowledging that the country is an emergency situation: It is, inarguably, intolerable that our country is being led by a madman.

And that, in turn, must lead to aggressive and constant reporting about what can be done about it.

There’s almost no such reporting at the moment. Our top news organizations rarely mention the option of impeachment and removal, or the application of the 25^th Amendment, or even his loyalists setting some limits. That’s for obvious reasons: In the current political climate, they are not remotely possible.

But that shouldn’t stop reporters from asking every person with power in any of the branches of government: Are you OK with the president of the United States -- the commander in chief of the most powerful military in all of time, his finger on the nuclear button – being mentally deranged?

Every one of them should be put on the record.

For those who say he’s not deranged, ask them how they explain some of his recent comments? Starting with his threat to eradicate Iranian civilization.

And for those who are not OK with it, ask them: What are they going to do about it?

And keep asking.

Why? Because we are in a state of emergency. Even if the political climate is not ripe for Trump to be stopped in some way, the urgency is still there. It ought to be topic one.

And perhaps, over time, the political calculus would change? Maybe even suddenly.

It’s past time that our top news organizations overcame their aversion to stating blunt truths that might appear partisan to small slivers of their declining audiences.

This president is profoundly unwell and, therefore, must be stopped -- somehow, no matter how unlikely it appears at this moment.

The Even More Urgent Question

I alluded to this in my April 2 column, but at this very moment the most urgent questions journalists should be asking are around the obligation and the ability of members of the military to refuse to commit war crimes.

They should ask every former member of the military: “What do you do in a situation like that?”

They should ask military experts: “What exactly should someone given an unlawful order do?”

They should ask what exactly Adm. Richard Correll, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, should do if Trump unlawfully orders him to attack Iran with nuclear weapons?

They should be asking members of Congress what is their advice to members of the military ordered to do clearly illegal and morally indefensible things?

They should ask experts in domestic and international law how likely it is that members of the military would be prosecuted for following unlawful orders and committing war crime, or even genocide?

They should ask everyone with any expertise what should bomber pilots do? What should the mission commander, the navigator, and the electronic warfare officer do?

News organizations really blew a key opportunity to address the core issues here after six members of Congress recorded a video in November reminding members of the military that they can and must refuse illegal orders. Trump was so incensed he accused them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and he ordered the Justice Department to indict them. (Which failed miserably.)

That video was produced as Trump began illegally bombing alleged drug boats off the coast of Latin America. That would have ben a good time to follow up by asking why those orders were not refused and why Trump was so threatened.

In fact, reporters should track down Admiral Alvin Hosley, who left his job as head of U.S. Southern Command in October, reportedly because he had concerns about the boat strikes. What does Hosley think should happen if members of the military are ordered to wipe out Iranian civilization?

There’s no time for a national discussion on these questions right now, but every news organization in the country should be helping equip members of the military with the knowledge they need about how to reject unlawful orders. It’s the right thing to do.

Donald Trump last night vowed to bomb Iranians “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

That’s a phenomenally racist, crude and cruel thing to say.

But it’s also a promise to commit war crimes. It would require the mass destruction of civilian targets.

International law is clear: Intentionally attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Even if the destruction offers a definite military advantage, attacks are outlawed if they may cause disproportionate harm to civilians.

Trump’s targets are clearly civilian. If there is no “deal,” he said – and there are no signs of any sort of deal – “we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously,” he said. He might even destroy their oil facilities, he said, acknowledging that “it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding.”

Major news organizations are not covering this with the appropriate level of alarm or urgency. Trump has been making extreme threats like this for nearly two weeks now, but political journalists convey his remarks stenographically. Most of the time, they don’t mention the term “war crime” at all, preferring to characterize his comments with descriptions like – I kid you not -- “freewheeling”.

This morning, the Associated Press and the New York Times quoted Trump’s “Stone Ages” threat, but didn’t even hint at any moral or legal concerns.

Even worse, the Washington Post actually gave Trump credit for not threatening Iran’s drinking-water supply -- which he did on Monday. Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Karen DeYoung wrote that “while he said the U.S. will hit power grids, he pulled back from naming desalinization plants as a target, something that was widely decried as a potential war crime.” (DeYoung’s original report mentioning Trump’s threat to water plants, said no such thing.)

Ask These Questions Before It Starts

So yes, news organizations need to properly situate Trump’s threats as war crimes in the making.

But they also need to start aggressively raising questions like:

• Are we really going to do this?

• Will there be any political opposition?

• Are these unlawful orders?

• Should members of the military refuse orders to bomb civilian targets?

• How would that work?

• Is there any discussion of that in the military ranks?

• Are there any high-ranking officers willing to go on the record against bombing civilian targets?

• What do veterans think?

• What do Vietnam veterans think?

This would be a good time to revisit the video released by six members of Congress in November reminding members of the military that they can – and must – refuse illegal orders.

Speaking shortly after Trump began illegally bombing alleged drug boats off the coast of Latin America, the lawmakers took turns reading a statement in which they cautioned that the “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”

Federal prosecutors, egged on by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, attempted to indict the lawmakers for “interfering with the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the U.S. armed forces” – but were soundly rebuffed by a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

What the six lawmakers said was accurate, and lawful, and is more important now than ever.

Teaching the Public About War Crimes

This would, of course, not be Trump’s first use of unlawful force. In fact, the entire war – as a war of aggression – violates international law.

We are now in the eighth month of lethal strikes on those alleged drug boats, whose crews Trump condemns to death with no due process and outside of any armed conflict. The most recent strike was just last week. It was the 47^th in a series that has killed 163 people. You probably didn’t hear about it.

“The fact that these strikes have faded from public attention does not make these violations any less grave or unlawful,” Human Rights Watch’s Sarah Yager said in a statement.

On the very first day of Trump’s bombing campaign in Iran, U.S. missiles accidentally hit not one but two schools. A Tomahawk missile hit an elementary school full of children, killing at least 175 people, most of them young girls. And a new kind of missile, designed to detonate just above its target and spray lethal tungsten pellets, struck a sports hall and adjacent elementary school, killing at least 21 people. If the Pentagon failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out those attacks, they too would be war crimes.

Trump’s new strikes on civilian targets, of course, would be intentional. And they would be at a massive scale, the kind the world hasn’t seen since, well, Gaza.

So more than ever, the public needs to hear from experts about the law and the consequences.

Human Rights Watch warns of the “geographic spread, speed of escalation, and open disregard for international norms by all parties”:

Statements by top officials from the United States, Israel, and Iran demonstrate a willingness to violate fundamental protections of international humanitarian law, reveal callous disregard for civilian life and property, and signal that those in power do not consider themselves bound by the law. All world leaders should urgently speak out in defense of the rules that protect civilians everywhere, strongly condemn violations, and demand accountability.

The harm to civilians, in this case, would be vast. As Amnesty International explained in a statement:

By threatening such strikes, the USA is effectively indicating its willingness to plunge an entire country into darkness, and to potentially deprive its people of their human rights to life, water, food, healthcare and adequate standard of living, and to subject them to severe pain and suffering.

Al Jazeera frequently talks to experts:

Yusra Suedi, assistant professor in international law at the University of Manchester, said Trump’s threat “reinforces the climate of impunity around collective punishment in warfare”.

“This is clearly an act of collective punishment, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. You can’t deliberately harm an entire civilian population to pressure its government,” Suedi told Al Jazeera.

Also:

Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at the rights group DAWN, said Trump’s threats represent “clear, public evidence of criminal intent”.

“Threatening to obliterate a nation’s power grid, oil infrastructure and water supply to coerce its government is not a negotiating tactic; it is textbook collective punishment and a war crime,” Jarrar told Al Jazeera.

The online journal Just Security is publishing a series of scholarly essays on the war, including an excellent primer on targeting.

The New York Times Knows Better

The New York Times’s lame and euphemistic coverage of Trump’s threats is particularly egregious not just because of its extraordinary influence but because, as an institution, it knows better.

I say that with confidence, because Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay – notably not political reporters – wrote an article right after Trump’s initial rant about attacking power plants that, in the Times print edition, was headlined “Power Grid Hit Would Be War Crime, Experts Say.” It had a strong opening paragraph:

President Trump’s threat to “obliterate” power stations in Iran if its leaders failed to open the Strait of Hormuz suggests that the United States is willing to violate international humanitarian law as part of its military campaign, according to current and former human rights officials.

It offered essential background:

In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued four arrest warrants to Russian military officers and officials charging them with war crimes for attacking “Ukrainian electric infrastructure.”

And it included informative and insightful quotes from experts:

“What we are seeing from all sides — the United States, Iran and Israel — is a race to the bottom in which threats against civilian infrastructure are becoming normalized,” said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “This kind of rhetoric doesn’t just escalate tensions irresponsibly, it signals a dangerous willingness to erode the very rules designed to protect civilians in war.”

Also:

“Trump is openly threatening a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “And people aren’t saying anything because they’re numb to it.”

The fact that the Times’s political reporters and its top editors act like that article never came out speaks volumes to their intent. They’re not ignorant. They’re covering up.

Reporters Need to Be Persistent

One last point: Trump needs to be personally confronted about his unlawful orders – and reporters are the only people with the opportunity to do that.

Similarly, war crimes ought to be a consistent topic at White House press briefings. Kudos to NBC’s Garrett Haake, who asked the right question at Monday’s briefing:

Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited. Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military? And how do you square that with this administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?

Karoline Leavitt of course ducked the issue, while attacking Haake for asking. “I’m sure some experts are telling you that in your ear, to try to ask me that question,” she said, as if that would be a bad thing.

Then Leavitt called on Scripps News’s Haley Bull, who chose not to follow up. Shame on her and her colleagues.

Trump’s first term as president has been so utterly eclipsed by the savagery of his second one that many people may have forgotten his deadly, abysmal mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. He delayed testing, mocked mask-wearing, spread conspiracy theories, undermined the work of scientists, and held campaign rallies that spread the virus. By one estimate, 58,000 Americans died because of his negligence -- and maybe a lot more.

But if you do look back at that period -- particularly the spring and summer of 2020 -- a lot of the ways that Trump is approaching the war he started in Iran are incredibly familiar. (And so, although to a lesser extent, is the press coverage.)

Here’s the summary I put on top of the archive of my Trump and Covid coverage. Tell me if it rings a bell.

I wrote a lot about the coverage of Trump’s response to the pandemic, and here is what was clear all along: He had no real plan to restore the country to health other than to peddle false hope, predict a quick end, adopt fake deadlines and shift the blame to others. The most urgent need was to test, test, test, and either he didn’t get it or he didn’t want to know the results because they would “look bad”. The media blew its coverage by letting political reporters lead instead of health and science reporters. Political reporters paid way too much attention to whatever Trump said, such that whatever it was made headlines. They let Trump set the agenda instead of letting knowledgeable people do it. Political reporters also gave Trump way too much credit for trying. They covered up for his incoherence, ignorance, cluelessness, gaslighting, and yes, just plain stupidity. They failed to properly exploit their rare access to him by confronting him with facts and piercing his bubble. They remained complacent in the face of a massive death toll, instead of relentlessly demanding more forceful action.

Trump’s handling of the Iran crisis is even more condemnable than his handling of Covid – because he caused this one. He’s guilty of starting this war as well as bungling it.

But consider the similarities:

He launched the war with no discernible plan. His goals and his strategy change from minute to minute.

He keeps on peddling false hope and predicting a quick end. “This is a short excursion,” he said on March 7. “It’s going to be ended soon… it’s going to be finished pretty quickly,” he said on March 9. “This war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news,” he said on March 24.

He sets fake deadlines. On March 21, he gave Iran “48 HOURS from this exact point in time” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or he would blow up their power plants (a war crime.) On March 23, he extended the deadline to March 27. Now it’s April 6.

While testing is not germane this time around, his aversion to accurate information persists. His daily two-minute “video montage” is said to “emphasize U.S. successes.”

The press coverage, meanwhile, is less credulous than it was during Covid. There have been several articles from our top newsrooms that at least mention his “shifting” and “conflicting” rationales for the war, and the “dizzying turnabouts” as he “has swung wildly between suggesting that the war could end soon and signaling it would escalate.”

But our top journalists continue to fundamentally cover up Trump’s derangement and incoherence. The man is lying almost constantly, gaslighting at full throttle, but the news coverage sanewashes his nonsense with euphemisms like “freestyle diplomacy.”

They cover this war largely as a political story, with most of the news coming out of the (lying) White House.

In their brief moments of access, they ask lame questions that get useless answers.

What they should be doing is confronting him -- telling him the truth, on behalf of a public that resoundingly opposes the war. They should be trying to make sure he understands that the war is killing innocent people, terrorizing entire populations, destabilizing the globe, tanking the economy, and arguably strengthening Iran’s own tyrannical regime.

And they should demand to know what he’s doing to stop it. Because unlike Covid, Trump actually does have the ability to make this crisis go away.

For a while now, I’ve been imploring the leaders of our top news organizations to call out Donald Trump’s derangement. My argument is simple: It is the central, underlying explanation for everything else they’re covering.

They won’t do it. Their arguments: It would appear partisan; We don’t want to take sides; And (more reasonably) we prohibit the use of language associated with mental illness unless a person has been diagnosed as mentally ill. (I wrestle with a variation of this last one myself: How do you call him insane without stigmatizing insane people?)

But it seems to me there is one thing any thinking journalist should be able to agree on: that Trump is untrustworthy.

This cannot be seriously in doubt.

Just for starters, news reports have amply documented that he lies constantly, he contradicts himself often, and he not infrequently does the opposite of what he said he would do.

That has been clear for a long time. But it has never been clearer than it is now, as he bloviates and flip-flops while incompetently commanding a brutal, deadly war that he promised never to start.

My message to newsroom leaders is this: If you quote Trump in a way that suggests that what he says is accurate or represents some sort of commitment, you are deceiving the people who count on you to tell them the truth.

And don’t just assume that everyone realizes he may well be lying. (If it’s so obvious, why are you afraid to say so?) You have to warn them every time. Maybe a standard disclaimer, maybe something related to the specific issue. Things like:

• “Trump’s previous statements about the war, including why he started it, have been erratic and contradictory.”

• “Trump, who has repeatedly proven that he is untrustworthy, ….”

• “Keep in mind: Trump consistently lies about the state of the economy.”

• “Trump makes many false claims each day, either out of mendacity or delusion.”

• “Trump is a primary source of U.S. disinformation.”

• “Trump has cited an arsenal of lies and distortions to justify significant policy changes on the economy, immigration and deployments of the military.” (Almost verbatim from a New York Times article.)

Consider using “claimed” instead of “said”.

Surround his lies with clear statements about reality – the “truth sandwich.”

And explain why he’s being deceitful – the “why behind the lie.”

His about-faces on such issues as tariffs and Iran have created chaos in the financial markets. How about interjecting some skepticism when he says something absurd in the first place, so that people won’t overreact when he says it – and again when he takes it back?

And have some self-respect. One of Trump’s most consistent messages to his supporters has been to mistrust the mainstream media and its “fake news.” But the primary source of “fake news” in the mainstream media is news reports based on Trump’s lies. So stop doing that.

And Now, War

Trump’s mendacity about the reason and goals for his unjustified and Iran have called attention to the cost -- and the centrality -- of his untrustworthiness.

The New York Times editorial board -- which in this case I believe reflects what its news side would report if it were being honest – wrote last week about this very topic:

Lying is standard behavior for Mr. Trump, of course. His political career began with a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, and he has lied about his business, his wealth, his inauguration crowd size, his defeat in the 2020 election and so much more…. Many people are so accustomed to his lies that they hardly notice them anymore.

Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he encourages his cabinet and his generals to mislead the country and one another about how the war is going. He creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common. He makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.

The editorial concluded:

Starting a war is the most serious action that a political leader can take. It ends lives and can change history. The decisions that guide war must be based in reality, and presidents owe American service members and their families the truth about why they are being asked to fight. Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world.

Trump included a message to the Iranian people in his Feb. 28 statement announcing the war. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he said. On March 6, he said that the United States must be involved in choosing the next leader of Iran and posted on social media that “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

By contrast, intelligence reports have concluded that Iranian protesters would “get slaughtered” if they take to the streets.

And Trump today is claiming that the U.S. and Iran are in “productive“ talks toward a “complete and total” resolution of the war.

As a result, he said, he won’t “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, as he had claimed on Saturday that he would do if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened immediately.

Iran denies any such talks are taking place, so Trump could well be lying about that, too.

And now the Israelis, who were the only people happy with how the war was going, are getting the full Trump effect.

The Times of Israel reports that “Jerusalem was caught off guard by the announcement from the mercurial president.” It concludes: “Israelis who had trusted the plan now fear there is no plan and wonder if Trump can still be trusted.”

Global Effects

Trump’s untrustworthiness has led to a collapse in political trust between Washington and its allies, as Anne Applebaum writes in the Atlantic:

Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.

He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.

She concludes:

If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.

New York Times global affairs correspondent Damien Cave wrote a devastating article headlined “How Trump Supercharged Distrust, Driving U.S. Allies Away.”

He wrote it a year ago. Back then, the issue was largely related to tariffs:

His own distrust of allies, evident in his zero-sum belief that gains for others are losses for America, has been reciprocated. What it’s created is familiar — a distrust spiral. If you think the other person (or country) is not trustworthy, you’re more likely to break rules and contracts without shame, studies show, reinforcing a partner’s own distrust, leading to more aggression or reduced interaction….

Experts said it would take years and a slew of costly trust-building efforts to bring America together with allies, new or old, for anything long-term.

This lost of trust could well extend the war, as Steve Dunne, a researcher at the University of Warwick in the UK, writes for The Conversation:

Without trust, negotiation itself becomes an impossibility. And if trust is consistently broken, even those predisposed towards cooperation will be deterred.

He concludes:

American reliability must now be broadly questioned, from collective security to the rule of law. The effect of this widespread loss of trust – embodied by Trump’s indiscriminate and ill-mannered economic attacks – will be the neutering of US soft power.

And going forward, nothing erodes public trust like a war full of lies, as Princeton history professor Julian E. Zelizer writes for Foreign Policy:

After President Donald Trump launched a major military attack on Iran in conjunction with Israel without providing a consistent rationale and without making a public case to Congress, it seems safe to say the result will be a further erosion of public trust in the federal government.

He concludes:

Despite the strong incentives to say whatever is necessary to legitimate military operations, the lies will be exposed over time. Presidents cannot ignore the long-term costs that result from dismissing the truth in pursuit of national security.

Whether Trump is actively lying, or whether he’s delusional – or whether his thinking process is simply so chaotic and unreliable that reality has no bearing on it whatsoever – there’s simply no possible reason to trust what he says.

And yet the elite media still more often than not treats his words as if they were coming from a normal president: Dutifully and stenographically.

I don’t know how many times I have fruitlessly called for an end to media’s normalization of this very damaged and disturbed man.

But here is one step in that direction that shouldn’t feel radical: Just make sure your readers and viewers realize he can’t be trusted to be telling the truth.

Tell the truth yourself.

There was exciting news on Monday for political journalism. Billionaire media entrepreneur Robert Albritton announced that he is bankrolling “the next great Washington newsroom.”

It’s a bold attempt to seize the mantle of the Washington Post, which was gutted by its own billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, last month.

Albritton, who founded then sold Politico, said he will rename and double the size of his existing 50-person digital news outlet called NOTUS, which stands for news of the United States. NOTUS was launched in 2024 as a politics-and-policy news site and a training ground for aspiring public affairs journalists.

Dana Milbank, whose trenchant Washington Post political column was axed by Bezos’s MAGA-friendly henchmen, said on Facebook that he will resume it at what he described as a “scrappy and fearless national news organization” funded by “a public-spirited media owner who uses his billions to support journalism above all else, who isn’t afraid to hold the powerful to account and who cares deeply about the Washington community.”

In a memo to his staff, Albritton said the new newsroom will not change NOTUS’s core principles, the first one of which he identified as “Our commitment to producing non-partisan journalism that’s trusted by readers from every part of the political spectrum.”

But here’s the thing: That can’t be done.

A whole lot of people on the far-right side of the political spectrum are so steeped in disinformation and conspiracy theories that they won’t trust any form of journalism that fundamentally engages in truth-telling.

Too many existing newsrooms try to win those folks over with a so-called “objectivity” that creates false equivalences between things that are largely true and things that are largely untrue. They fail to clearly state obvious conclusions.

But I don’t think those things actually win anyone over. And they end up doing the rest of the public a grave disservice.

If I were launching a new Washington newsroom, it would engage in blunt truth-telling. And one of its top commitments would be to convert people who have fallen prey to propaganda and lies, not cater to them.

This newsroom would actively try to wean people off Fox News and other vectors of disinformation by exposing and debunking their deceit.

It would identify what issues Americans are most ill-informed about, would produce content full of context and background about them, and would encourage its audience to share that content widely.

It would recognize that these are profoundly abnormal times, and that the political journalism reflex not to take sides doesn’t apply if one side is the truth and the other is a lie. It would acknowledge the urgency of the moment, and would sound the alarm.

It would absolutely be non-partisan. In fact, more than that, it would be anti-partisan, because partisans twist facts to suit their goals, which is antithetical to independent journalism. For instance, it wouldn’t shy away from reporting on how both of our political parties have failed us and have been corrupted by money.

And yet, it would not create false equivalence between the conduct of the two parties, one of which now consistently traffics in deception and fantasy and is led by a dangerously unstable and destructive president.

It wouldn’t mince words; it would report the evidence of Trump’s derangement, including his untrustworthiness, his instability, and his incoherence. Then it would reach the obvious conclusion. It would call out his hostility toward minorities and women. These are essential facts, not things to dance around or both-sides about.

It would espouse and defend common-sense American values – very much including those that are under attack from the MAGA movement.

It would be proudly pro-democracy, exposing and decrying authoritarianism and any attempts to prevent votes from being cast and counted.

It would champion cherished American values like diversity and pluralism, and not be afraid to call out the evils of racism and misogyny.

It would advocate for free speech, and identify those who threaten it.

It would not assume that everyone fully understands core constitutional propositions including the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, and even democracy. So it would take time to explain them. Same with the laws of war.

These are not Democratic values. These are American values. These are journalistic values.

And its editors would consistently ask reporters to address a question that is often ignored: Why?

Why is this person lying? (What are they trying to accomplish?) Why is Trump so angry all the time? (Because he’s deranged.) Why does Trump lie so much? (Because he’s a con man.) Why are so many courts finding almost all of Trump’s major initiatives to be illegal? (Because he’s running a criminal enterprise.)

I think such a news site would find a huge audience. I believe there is a widespread hunger for Washington reporting that doesn’t try to appease the know-nothings, but instead validates what intelligent, engaged people are seeing in front of their own eyes.

And I’ll hope for the best.

--------------------------------

Also see:

• How a great nonprofit news organization would cover national politics (December 12, 2024)

• What the next generation of editors need to tell their political reporters (January 31, 2021)

• Press Watch mission statement: Political journalism needs a reset (September 23, 2021)

This war is idiotic, the work of a madman.

News reports should be making that clear.

And newspaper editorial boards should be calling for it to stop.

This is not a tough one. People are dying and killing for no good reason. The U.S. is committing war crimes (and bragging about it.) The war is illegal and unconstitutional. Americans oppose it by wide margins.

And yet the only major American news outlet that I’ve seen calling for an end to war in its editorials is… actually British. It’s the Guardian. And even they were pretty meek about it.

The Guardian Wants Out

In its Thursday editorial, the Guardian actually focused on how “it is the world’s poorest and most vulnerable who will be worst hit” -- certainly an important point. Almost as an afterthought, in the middle of the final paragraph, the editorial noted that “what is needed most is an end to this disastrous and illegal war.”

The New York Times Ducks

And don’t look to the New York Times editorial board for a principled stand on the most important issue of the moment. Although it’s the most influential editorial board in the country – which is not necessarily saying much -- it has published only two editorials about the war.

One was on the first day and it boldly concluded: “We lament that Mr. Trump is not treating war as the grave matter that it is.”

Then there was one more editorial, on the second day. It noted that Trump had gone to war “without explaining his strategy for the future and without the support of almost any other ally.” Therefore, “there are reasons to worry about what comes next,” it said. It urged Trump to “work with Congress” and “bring international partners into the fold.”

So weak.

And since then, crickets.

How shameful.

The Washington Post Whiffs

My expectations were not high for the Washington Post editorial board, which Jeff Bezos has stocked with semi-literate reactionaries. But I was still disappointed.

The Post has published one sole editorial about the war, on the first day, which inanely concluded: “Whether Trump has made the right call will hinge on factors now beyond his control.”

The Post’s board does seem to have a thing about oil prices, though. It published a quickly belied editorial on March 3 headlined: “The U.S. has oil insurance; It’s called the free market.” Then on March 9 it published another piece about oil that I can’t decipher enough to summarize.

The Los Angeles Times Really Whiffs

The Los Angeles Times editorial board, which appears to consist only of its loony billionaire owner and one other person, doesn’t publish much these days, and hasn’t opined about the war at all.

Among other major newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chicago Tribune editorial boards haven’t called for the war to end, but they have been highly – sometimes blisteringly -- critical.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Stings

A Philadelphia Inquirer editorial published on March 2 opened with a bang: “Donald Trump, the president of war, keeps killing people at home and abroad.” In this case, it said, “Trump violated the Constitution (again) by going to war without consent from Congress and unleashed more chaos.” It reproached “the bloodthirsty leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia” for egging Trump on. And it concluded: “Now, with no clear exit strategy in Iran, Trump appears poised to continue to try to bomb his way to a Nobel Peace Prize, while making a mockery of America.”

And a March 12 editorial bemoaned that “The U.S. is now led by a confederacy of dunces,” and said that “Trump has no idea what he is doing, and his word is no good.” It concluded that “the president wreaks global chaos and accomplishes little beyond sowing death, destruction, and suffering.”

The Chicago Tribune Warns

The Chicago Tribune editorial board wrote on March 1 that it “won’t miss” Ali Khamenei, but warned of the possible consequences: “We only wish we had more confidence in Trump’s follow-through skills.”

On March 8, it published an editorial headlined “Israel’s rationale for change in Iran is clear. But the American rationale is murky indeed.”

On March 10, it called attention to the human costs of war: “Behind every military objective are ordinary people who will live with the brutal consequences long after the bombs stop falling.”

And on March 11, it called on the White House to “take the possibility of a draft off the table.”

The Albany Times-Union Scolds

The Albany Times Union, in a March 2 editorial, criticized Trump for initiating a war without a credible case or a plan. “It’s one thing to degrade Iran’s navy and re-obliterate its nuclear program. It’s quite another to turn a repressive, terrorism-sponsoring state into … well, what? Mr. Trump has given no sign that he has even a vague concept of what long-term success would look like.”

Another Times Union editorial, on March 12, decried Trump’s dishonest attempt to blame Iran for the U.S. attack on an Iranian girls school. “In a time of war, the American public needs honesty more than ever. When our sons and daughters may be asked to put their lives on the line, when we are asked to weather risks to our economy and international relationships, we need to know why, and we need to be able to believe the answer.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Says Scale It Back

The editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which is closing in May, urged Trump to seek narrow goals.

A March 3 editorial warned: “There is no better way to ensure an open-ended and ruinous commitment, as Trump and his advisors should know better than most, than having unclear war aims.”

The on March 8, an editorial argued that “There is only one way to minimize the costs of opening a war with Iran while still achieving some positive goal: Sharply limit the war’s scope. Iran’s ability to project power has been significantly degraded in the past week. Let that be enough.” It continued: “Now is not the time for machismo, but for sober strategizing. Blowing things up is part of winning, but it’s not winning itself. That requires virtues much harder to come by: judgment, understanding, humility and the ability to accept a limited victory that’s in America’s, and the world’s, best interests.”

The Toledo Blade Praises

The Toledo Blade, which oddly enough is owned by the same family as the Post-Gazette, published an editorial on March 3 declaring that “President Trump’s surprise attack on Iran was a legitimate exercise in diplomacy.”

The Houston Chronicle Wants Accountability

The Houston Chronicle editorial board on Thursday addressed the parallels with the Iraq war: “The American people deserved the truth in 2003, and we deserve it now.” It also called attention to the deadly U.S. missile attack on a girls school in Iran and oil price hikes. “None of this was necessary,” the editorial said. “If the American people do not hold the president accountable for what happened to the school girls in Minab, we should, at the least, do so out of our own rational self-interest.”

The Financial Times Frets

The Financial Times editorial board on March 1 declared the war an “epic gamble” and a “fateful war of choice.” It warned: “America, the region, and Iran most of all, may come to regret it bitterly if, as so often happens in wars, this one veers off its prosecutor’s script.”

On March 10, a Financial Times editorial criticized Trump for his “cavalier attitude towards a devastating war,” and said “the war he started has no good ending.” It concluded: “Whichever path Trump now takes, it will be others who pay the price of his Iran folly.”

Bloomberg Proposes a Way Out

A Bloomberg editorial on March 2 called for “a clearer plan.” It concluded: “The American people didn’t ask for this war. They’re owed not just a better explanation, but also a wide-ranging effort by the administration to ensure that the risks being taken by troops in the field, the costs paid by civilians in the region and the damage done to U.S. credibility aren’t in vain.”

In a March 10 editorial it argued that “what’s needed is a negotiated solution -- one that leaves Iran whole and stable, but contained militarily.”

The Wall Street Journal Waves the Pom Poms

The cheerleading for the war has been led by newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, particularly the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board keeps pushing Trump to go further.

On March 1, it warned against ending the war too soon.

On March 2, it called the war “a necessary act of deterrence” that “has the potential to reshape the Middle East for the better and lead to a safer world.”

On March 3, it warned of “false inflation alarms” intended “to spook President Trump.”

The Journal’s most unintentionally laughable editorial ran on March 4, when it mocked “the media and political class” for needlessly worrying about the war’s effects on the financial markets, the possibility of a regional war, and how “there’s no plan for how this ends”.

On March 9, it warned that “stopping now amid some short-term economic discomfort would be a victory for the mullahs.”

On March 10, it urged Trump to capture Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, with troops on the ground if necessary.

And on March 13, in an editorial headlined “Will Trump ‘Fight to Win’ in Iran?,” the board urged Trump not to stop the war until Iran no longer has the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz.

The New York Post Kvells

The editorial board of the Murdoch-owned New York Post, on the first day of the war, saluted “Trump’s bold move to rid the world of Iran’s evil regime once and for all.”

On March 1, a Post editorial proclaimed that “it’s clearly time to retire TACO — the snarky claim that ‘Trump always chickens out.’”

But on March 11, a slightly less cocky editorial board acknowledged that “regular Americans and experts… have good reason to feel confused.” So, it said, “the nation’s leaders need to start giving the public a regular, clear, concrete sense of how Operation Epic Fury is proceeding.”

Press Watch Despairs

I guess the editorial boards that criticize the war but don’t call for it to end are doing so because they want to seem realistic.

And calling on Trump to explain himself better, or consult Congress, or consider limiting his goals sounds much more grown up than stomping your feet and yelling: “Out!”

Furthermore, it’s not like leading Democrats are loudly demanding an immediate cessation of the war, either. Most of them are focusing on procedural stuff, which is important but not immediate.

Me, I just watch the death toll (on both sides) grow, and I want to shout. It makes no sense and I want the killing to end.

And heck, at some point Trump is probably going to declare victory and bug out, so why not now?

Now would be better. I think a lot of the members of a lot of these editorial boards think so, too. I call on them to stop holding back, to be brave, and to shout it from the rooftops: STOP THE WAR!

Let’s say the president is mentally unfit for duty.

Let’s say that has been pretty clear for a while now, what with his delusion that he won an election he lost, his chaotic imposition of illegal and irrational tariffs, his self-evident lies about how well everything is going, his frequent lapses into incoherence, and so on.

And then let’s say he unilaterally starts a major war of aggression with no clear rationale. He keeps changing his mind about what the goal is, and whether it is being achieved. He boasts about it like a schoolyard bully and makes apocalyptic threats. He says everything is under control when it is not.

Now bombs are dropping and people are dying and tens of millions of people are living in fear.

And it’s all because he’s a profoundly deranged man.

At what point should a news organization devoted to impartiality start stating the obvious conclusion, even if it’s offensive to a small minority of people, most of whom don’t consume their news anyway?

I realize this is not the first time that Trump has cost people their lives – several hundred thousand people have died because of the closure of USAID early in Trump’s second term.

But this is a war.

With that madman as commander in chief.

Who makes his decisions based on “feelings.”

So I have to ask the leaders of our major news organizations: Doesn’t that cross the line?

Doesn’t the fact that he is bombing the hell out of a country for no particular reason, endangering the region, and destabilizing the world make it incumbent upon you to be blunt about the problem, rather than dancing around it? Isn’t it time for clarity instead of euphemism? Isn’t it time to put aside your aloofness, your concerns about appearing partisan, and your fears of offending your corporate masters? Isn’t it time to tell the whole truth, in the best interests of the country and the world?

I sincerely hope that the leaders of our top news organizations are doing some serious introspection right now.

Maybe they’re searching for the right language – they just can’t bring themselves to use words like deranged or dangerous.

Well here are some things they can say – in the institution’s own voice -- that don’t sound so extreme, all of which are backed up by extensive evidence.

He is volatile. He is unreliable. He lacks credibility. Sometimes he is incoherent. He is asserting dictator-like powers. He operates in a bubble of enablers. When he utters a falsehood, it is because he is lying or because he has lost touch with reality – or both. He is being misled by his aides. He believes the lies he sees on Fox News.

And if news executives aren’t willing to be blunt in their institutional voice, they should at least include informed speculation about why he says and does things that are so irrational and disconnected from reality.

They can attribute it to experts or critics if they must, but they should fully describe the critique that provides the essential context for virtually every news article coming out of Washington these days.

Something like: “Critics say Trump is deranged and unfit, that his aides are venal, that his cabinet is inept, and that his supporters are cultists. They say nothing he says can be trusted and that he should be removed from office.”

A Case Study: The Bombing of a School for Girls in Iran

In the first massive barrage of the war on Feb. 28, a Tomahawk missile fired by the U.S. government destroyed an elementary school in southern Iran, killing about 175 people, most of them young girls. The horror – it’s almost unimaginable.

Not all the details were immediately available, but even early reports were clear that the deaths were caused by an air strike. There was never any doubt that it involved U.S. or Israeli weapons.

A March 5 visual investigation by the New York Times confirmed that the “precision strike” that destroyed the school “appears to have been part of an attack on an adjacent naval base.” A March 6 Associated Press article recounted the “several factors” that pointed to “a U.S. strike.”

But on March 7, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that “in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.”

Wow.

This, to me, was about as close as Trump could come to publicly announcing his own derangement.

What he said wasn’t just a craven and villainous denial of responsibility, it was ludicrous. It was unhinged. It was disconnected from reality. Best case scenario: he was repeating something completely absurd that he’d heard from his staff or on TV. And he really seemed to believe it.

I thought that should be a big story. But it wasn’t. Most news organizations just mentioned it in passing, noting that the evidence suggested otherwise.

The New York Times reported that “An analysis by The New York Times indicates that the school was most likely hit by an American airstrike.” The Washington Post briefly cited a Human Rights Watch report’s conclusion that the incident “should be investigated as a war crime.”

And to its partial credit, the Times reported the next day, on March 8, that newly released video showed that a Tomahawk cruise missile had struck the naval base beside the school as part of a series of precision strikes. The subhead – though not the article, oddly enough – bluntly stated that “The evidence contradicts President Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for a strike at the school that killed 175 people, most of them children.”

But where was the obvious conclusion that the commander in chief was saying absolutely absurd things about the war? And that this might be a problem? Not there.

Trump was even more ridiculous during a press conference two days later, on Monday, in response to a question from New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh:

McCreesh: There’s footage that shows that an American missile strike and a Tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls’ school. So will the Americans -- will the US -- accept any responsibility for that strike?

Trump: Well, I haven’t seen it and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by -- you know, is sold and used by other countries. You know that. And whether it’s Iran, who also has some Tomahawks. They wish they had more. But whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very generic. It’s sold to other countries.

Iran doesn’t have Tomahawks. Israel doesn’t even have Tomahawks. Only the U.S., the U.K., Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan have Tomahawks.

Trump should know that.

Instead, the commander-in-chief is talking nonsense. He is either disqualifyingly ignorant, or he’s lying. Or both.

Why won’t our major news organizations say so?

The Sanewashing Continues

On Monday alone, Trump contradicted himself several times about a key question: When does this all end?

Trump at various points said “I think the war is very complete, pretty much”; “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough”; We “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated”; “We could call it a tremendous success right now — as we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further, and we’re going to go further.”

CNN’s Aaron Blake was among those who did a nice job of describing Trump’s contradictory statements.

But where is the obvious conclusion that Trump is clueless? That the commander-in-chief has no idea what he’s saying from minute to minute? That he is unfit to be in charge?

Trump’s explanations of why he went to war have been even more contradictory. On Monday, he added this one: “If we did not hit them, they were going to take over the Middle East.”

He’s talking nonsense.

And he’s now openly engaging in apocalyptic salt-the-earth style threats. “We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world,” he said in the Monday press conference. In a Truth Social post Monday night, he raved: “we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them.”

This is insane, untenable, inhumane language. Journalists everywhere should be sounding alarms. People need to start telling him “no”. This has to stop.

Collecting the Evidence, but Not Reaching the Obvious Conclusions

I’m not saying that mainstream war coverage has been awful. Our major news organizations have at times done an excellent job of collecting the evidence of Trump’s incapacity and reporting it out -- particularly the New York Times, which is now more than ever the dominant voice in American journalism.

But they’re not connecting the dots. They leave that to the readers and the viewers. As I’ve written before, their presentation of their findings is mealy-mouthed, often with watered down headlines and top paragraphs full of weasel words.

They are failing to give their audience the necessary and obvious explanation for this madness. That’s not enough. Especially not now.

If you follow me on Bluesky (and you should) you know I have plenty of examples.

Trump’s ‘Unique’ Style

This Washington Post headline on Monday made me gag: “A wartime presidency defined by Trump’s unique political style.”

Reporter Michael Birnbaum described many signs of Trump’s dangerous derangement and unfitness, but the closest we got to a critique was him writing that Trump’s “lack of a visible effort to try to expand the basis of support for the war carries risks.”

In failing to state the obvious conclusion – not even ascribed to “critics” -- he sanewashed Trump’s conduct. The headline’s use of the word “unique” is a pathetic euphemism for “chaotic and irrational“. It was worse than nothing.

Trump’s ‘Gut’

The contents of David E. Sanger’s article in the New York Times on March 4 were important and alarming. But the word choices, especially in the headline – “Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up. – were utterly craven. Sanger knows better. Trump doesn’t “go with his gut”. He operates by whim -- or under the influence of his fellow autocrats -- and his staff scrambles urgently to enable him.

(The ultimate example of a Times story that got the goods but embarrassed itself with its word choice still remains: “Trump Says His Unpredictable Style Gives Him Leverage. But It Has a Cost.”)

Trump’s Endgame

I admired this Times headline on March 7: “In War’s First Week, a Punishing Military Campaign With No Coherent Endgame”. Its seven(!) authors reported that “Trump has bounced between wildly divergent explanations for what he hopes to achieve.”

But why?

Why does Trump have no coherent endgame?

What is wrong with him that he acts this way?

What does it mean for the servicemembers he has sent out to kill and die?

What does it mean for our country that we are led by someone incoherent about the most important things imaginable?

They don’t ask. They don’t tell.

The Momentous Memo

The Washington Post had a dynamite article over the weekend headlined: “Intel report warns large-scale war ‘unlikely’ to oust Iran’s regime.”

The report “found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment.”

It was “completed about a week before the United States and Israel initiated the war on Feb. 28.”

Reporters John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel wrote that the findings “raise doubts about President Donald Trump’s declared plan to ‘clean out‘ Iran’s leadership structure and install a ruler of his choosing.”

But the article left its even greater significance entirely unstated.

The fact is that Trump either ignored the report, or was never shown it by his staff. That’s huge. It’s right up there with the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.“ memo. It speaks volumes about how Trump jumped into war with no idea what he was doing.

Incidentally, no reporter even asked Trump about that at his press conference on Monday.

Trump and Netanyahu

The Times published an excellent article on March 2 headlined “How Trump Decided to Go to War.” Its six authors described how Trump acted under the influence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the Times seems to have forgotten all about that since then. It doesn’t mention it anymore. It hasn’t raised any questions about what that signifies about Trump’s weakness and incapacity and submissiveness to autocrats.

Trump and Putin

OK, I clapped when I saw this Times headline: “How Trump’s War in Iran Has Echoes of Putin and Ukraine.” Anton Troianovski, a former Moscow bureau chief, was quite frank about how much they had in common.

But then came his conclusion:

The many Russian echoes in the White House’s messaging on Iran underscore the risks of a vaguely defined, open-ended war in which the attacking party pins its hopes on regime change.

Oh my God! How lame! The “echoes” are that an autocrat took his country to an idiotic war on false pretenses and with unrealistic expectations – that we’re ruled by an American version of Putin.

That was all left unsaid.

And don’t even get me going on this bizarre and unacceptable Times story by Amanda Taub, headlined “How Good Intentions Helped Pave Trump’s Road to Iran.”

What We Need More Of

We should be hearing more from the Iranian people. Yes, that’s hard. But it’s essential. Their humanity is a key missing part of the story.

And we should be hearing more from the antiwar contingent: in Congress, among protesters, and among faith leaders.

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, delivered a powerful “Call to Conscience” on March 7, well worth reading. After seeing an official White House post on Twitter -- maybe this one? -- he wrote: “A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening.” He concluded:

Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through while we’re waiting in line at the grocery store. But, in the end, we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military. We become addicted to the “spectacle” of explosions. And the price of this habit is almost unnoticeable, as we become desensitized to the true costs of war. But the longer we remain blind to the terrible consequences of war, the more we are risking the most precious gift God gave us: our humanity.

I saw no coverage from major news organizations, not even the Chicago Tribune.

It’s Not Working

Top news management’s ostensible devotion to “objectivity” is based on the theory that the people will trust their news sources more if they are “unbiased”, and that accurate information is more likely to be accepted as the truth if readers come to their own conclusions rather than being told what to think. A news organization perceived as objective, they say, has an increased power to persuade, and appeals to a larger audience.

But when their obsessive pursuit of impartiality leads them to deny or obscure the objective truth, it’s gone too far. And the objective truth is that Trump is deranged.

Choosing not to make that explicit doesn’t win over new readers. It doesn’t change MAGA minds. The people who think Trump is rational get their news elsewhere.

It’s bad journalism. It normalizes something that is very alarming. And it pisses off their own readers.

Look, I realize it’s not so easy to cover a war that was launched we’re-not-sure-why, whose goals are entirely unclear, and when the man solely responsible is an unstable, self-contradictory, wildly narcissistic liar who shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

But that’s the point. That’s the story right there. Tell it.

New York Times and Washington Post political reporters sometimes do excellent work collecting prima facie evidence that Donald Trump is motivated by unhinged conspiracy theories, self-glorification, and malice.

But when it comes to presenting their findings, they pull their punches.

The headlines are watered down. The top paragraphs are full of weasel words. Essential context is missing. Rather than draw the obvious conclusions, they (at best) attribute them to Trump critics, often far from the top of their stories.

Clearly, there is something in the culture established by top editors that mitigates against calling out Trump for who he is, in the misbegotten name of political neutrality. (See, e.g., something I wrote recently about Times editor Joe Kahn; and something I wrote a while back about “objectivity”.)

And presumably the reporters assure themselves that clever readers will read between the lines and understand the truly sordid nature of what they are reporting.

But that’s not enough. The burden shouldn’t be on readers to glean the real meaning from a news article. And for a lot of news consumers, the headline – and maybe the first paragraph – is all they read.

There have been countless examples of this kind of mincing, especially during the Trump era. Let me provide a few just from the past couple weeks.

The Post on a Trumpian Plan to Control Elections

The Washington Post published an article from Thursday by Isaac Arnsdorf, headlined: “Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency.” The subhead reads: “Activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a draft executive order that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.”

Here’s the first paragraph:

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

Let me be clear: I’m glad the Post ran this story. What it describes is highly alarming. The public should know about it.

But where in the article does Arnsdorf actually explain what’s so alarming about it? Where is the paragraph – or two, or three -- clearly stating that this is an utterly preposterous claim, that there is no such emergency, that it would grant dictator-like powers to the president, and that the obvious, malicious goal of these extremists is to spread doubt about election results and suppress voting?

No, it’s the reader who is left to reach theses obvious conclusions.

There was, in fact, no criticism in the article until Arnsdorf added a quote after initial publication from a statement by Democratic Sen. Mark R. Warner. Warner, accurately, called it “a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.” Arnsdorf also eventually added an excerpt from a statement by the League of Women Voters.

And look at the word choice. The headline uses passive construction. Neither it nor the subhead indicate anything untoward about the proposal or who it’s coming from.

The use of the word “unlock” is entirely inappropriate. These are not powers that a president has locked away. These are power a president simply does not have, and for good reason.

These are not “pro-Trump activists,” they are zealous election-deniers.

Arnsdorf doesn’t qualify the claim that “China interfered in the 2020 election” as being false or bizarre or crazy, which it is.

Another key bit of context that’s missing: Any such executive order would inevitably be challenged and likely enjoined by the courts, just like so many other executive orders that were flatly unconstitutional. The Constitution explicitly grants states the power to regulate elections, subject to Congress.

So let me rewrite that for you.

The headline should have been: “Extremists urge Trump to claim election power based on fictitious national emergency.”

The first paragraph should have been:

Far-right activists who say they are coordinating with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order declaring a national emergency based on false claims that China interfered in the 2020 election and asserting vast presidential power over how Americans get to vote.

Isn’t that more accurate? Doesn’t that tell the readers what they need to know?

The Times on Trump’s Attempts to Undermine Midterms

Here’s the headline on an article the New York Times published on Wednesday, by Shane Goldmacher and Nick Corasaniti: “Trump’s Push for Election Power Raises Fears He Will ‘Subvert’ Midterms.” The subhead is “The president appears to be undermining Americans’ faith in the outcome, at a moment when Republicans face an uphill climb to keep control of Congress.”

The first two paragraphs read as follows:

Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened President Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will.

With his words and deeds, the president — who pushed to overturn his 2020 defeat but declared his 2024 victory legitimate — appears to be undermining Americans’ trust that the midterms will be free and fair.

It’s an important story full of alarming facts.

But by choosing to put the word “subvert” in scare quotes in the headline, the Times telegraphed skepticism about the claim from the get-go. Similarly, the use of the word “appears” in the second paragraph is a mealy-mouthed hedge.

There are fears Trump will subvert the midterms. He is undermining Americans’ trust that the midterms will be free and fair. These are factual assertions. And yet the Times can’t even make them without scare quotes or hedging.

I would also question the use of the term “bend election mechanics to his will.” What does that even mean? If it means “impose his own rules about the way votes are cast and counted,” then why not say so?

The clause “who pushed to overturn his 2020 defeat but declared his 2024 victory legitimate” should instead have said: “who repeatedly tried and failed to steal the 2020 presidential election”.

And the third paragraph is a model of false equivalence:

As the political environment darkens for his party, Mr. Trump is again warning Republicans that Democrats are going to rig the results. At the same time, he is taking actions that make Democrats fear that Republicans are actually going to subvert the election.

It equates an accusation with no evidence to a concern that is supported by the article as well as historical facts. Ridiculous.

The Times on the Crusade to Find Noncitizen Voting

On Feb. 18, the New York Times published a story headlined: “Administration Targets Noncitizen Voting, Despite Finding It Rare.” It had five bylines: Glenn Thrush, Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Hamed Aleaziz. The subhead: “The intensified push is part of an extraordinary all-fronts effort to insert federal law enforcement into the machinery of American elections ahead of the midterms.”

The opening paragraph:

Homeland security officials, at the direction of the White House, are intensifying efforts to investigate voting by noncitizens in pursuit of President Trump’s baseless claims that illegal voting by undocumented immigrants is a rampant and insidious threat.

It’s a strong story, as far as it goes.

But it fails to address a key question: If noncitizen voting is a baseless nonproblem, they why are they doing this? If the move, as the authors state, is “part of an extraordinary all-fronts effort to insert federal law enforcement into the machinery of American elections ahead of the midterms,” then to what end?

The reporters leave readers a measly breadcrumb 20 paragraphs in, when they write:

The overall effort to enlist federal law enforcement in elections is being coordinated, at least in part, by Anthony Salisbury, a top deputy to Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser and the architect of the administration’s increasingly hard-line immigration crackdown.

Notably left unsaid to the reader is the fact that Miller is leading Trump’s white nationalist agenda -- which very much includes disenfranchising nonwhite voters.

The first description of the White House’s sleazy agenda comes 26 paragraphs into the 31-paragraph article, but only attributed to “voting rights groups”:

The increasing involvement of H.S.I., an agency responsible for immigration enforcement, in elections has raised alarm among voting rights groups that believe it is part of a campaign to intimidate legal voting by immigrants.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, stoked those concerns when she recently said her goal in cracking down on voter fraud was to “make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

And while I’m very glad they included Noem’s quote, I think “stoked those concerns” is too weak. How about “said as much” instead?

I’ll bet all five reporters on this story know full well what this is really all about: Trying to rig the election by blocking nonwhite people from voting. But not one of them was willing to say so.

The Post on the Poor Struggling DOJ

Similarly, on Feb. 20, the Washington Post published an article by Perry Stein, Patrick Marley, and Isaac Arnsdorf headlined “DOJ struggles as White House presses on voter fraud.” The subhead: “Efforts to prosecute noncitizen voters have been slowed by lack of evidence, officials say, while Trump aides push for a broader crackdown.”

The first paragraph:

The Justice Department has struggled to meet White House demands to prosecute noncitizen voters as conspiracy theories that President Donald Trump and his allies have pushed in public fail to hold up legally.

The seventh paragraph identifies DOJ’s dilemma:

The efforts so far haven’t yielded results, in large part because the types of rampant voter fraud that the Trump administration describes have never been found.

And nine paragraphs in, the authors quote a Democrat saying what they should have been comfortable writing in their own voice:

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) said… that Republicans’ focus on noncitizen voting is a “red herring” and “non-issue” that’s meant to dissuade Latinos and other voters from casting ballots.

“They’re trying to sow chaos into the process so it discourages people from participating,” he said.

Yes, that’s the story right there. Headline: “White House pressures DOJ to find crimes that don’t exist.”

Then the authors should have exposed the White House’s true motivations – in their own voice – and written at length about how utterly perverse and wildly dangerous it is for political appointees to send prosecutors out to find examples of a crime that doesn’t exist, when their job is to act on actual evidence.

Sadly, none of these failures surprise me. The push to suppress and control the vote has been central to the Republican agenda for a decade now, but as I wrote in 2021, our top political reporters cover it like it was any other partisan squabble, instead of calling it out as grotesque, racist, and anti-democratic.

But the lapses are not just about voting rights.

The Times on Trump’s Real Motives in Iran

The New York Times on Thursday published an article by Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper headlined “For Trump, Military Strike in Iran Could Serve Symbolic Purpose”. The subhead read: “Some officials in the Trump administration hope an attack would force Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program. Others have doubts.”

This, it turned out, was a hugely important story. But they totally buried the lead.

The first paragraph, in fact, contained no news. It was basically a summary of David E. Sanger’s essential, if slightly overdue, news analysis from Feb. 20. (That one was boldly headlined “As Trump Weighs Iran Strikes, He Declines to Make Clear Case for Why, or Why Now”.)

Barnes and Cooper wrote:

The targeted strikes on Iran being considered by the Trump administration would probably be aimed at nuclear and missile sites in the country. But the president has yet to specify, to either the American people or the troops who would carry out his orders, exactly what he wants this military engagement to accomplish.

Again: Not new -- but frankly, it’s a point that cannot be emphasized too much, so I didn’t mind. This would be an attack with no explanation and no debate. That’s crazy.

What the article’s headline hinted at in referring to a “symbolic purpose” only became clear in the seventh paragraph:

But any damage from a U.S. strike would more likely serve two symbolic purposes. Several administration officials said it would allow Mr. Trump to claim a military victory against an old foe.

In other words, it would make him feel good. It would make him feel better about himself.

That’s a startling, alarming, and disturbing conclusion. I’m glad they reported it. But it should have been in the lead. It should have been expanded upon. Historians should have been consulted. Foreign policy experts should have been asked to respond. The headline should have done more than hint.

The Times Normalizes Vaccine Lunacy

The New York Times published an article on Feb. 13 by Christina Jewett headlined “Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren.” Its subhead: “Proponents of vaccines warn that the efforts will further dismantle the immunization infrastructure and lead to more outbreaks of disease.”

It had a solid first paragraph!

Longtime allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, have launched a new effort to repeal laws that for decades have required children to be vaccinated against measles, polio and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten.

This was an important article about the clash between science, on the one hand, and obsessed conspiracy theorists who are effectively killing children, on the other.

But wait! That’s not how Jewett describes the two sides.

No, in her second paragraph she writes about “A newly formed coalition of vaccine activists” on the one side.

And when she finally gets around to what knowledgeable people say about it, she labels them “vaccine proponents.”

This is like writing about “gravity activists” and “gravity proponents” – except gravity is actually a theory and vaccine efficacy is a fact.

These people are lunatics. Everyone at the Times knows that. Hell, they’re a death cult.

By calling them “vaccine activists” the Times normalizes them.

And, in fact, that’s what all these examples have in common. They normalize lunacy and lying and criminal conduct.

Our top reporters frequently uncover shocking news about this deeply abnormal administration. But they evidently worry that being too blunt about what they’ve found would violate their newsroom culture, which prizes neutrality. They only tell part of the truth, and they count on the readers to fill in the blanks. They should be braver than that.

Many millions of Americans will be watching Donald Trump deliver his State of the Union address tonight.

They will hear him lying, and threatening, and sowing division. They will listen to him bragging about the economy they know is slumping and gloating about the brutal immigration regime that has shocked their consciences.

They will shake their heads as he describes himself as a peacemaker, even as he has set the nation on the brink of war.

They will observe a man increasingly disconnected from reality ramble on in a disordered fashion about how great he is, and how contemptible are his enemies.

Many of the people tuning in will then turn to news coverage from journalists who will appear to them to have watched something entirely different.

Those journalists, if precedent holds, will pull out select quotes and proposals and lead with them, as if Trump had been articulate. They will repeat his outrageous falsehoods without immediate and thorough rebuttal.

They will write about his “tone” and whether he appears empathetic, and whether he can accomplish a “reset.”

Case in point, Wednesday’s New York Times Politics newsletter put forth “5 big questions” about the speech. They included “Voters are worried about the cost of living. Can Trump show he sympathizes?” Another is “What’s his tone on immigration?”

The journalists will act as if he delivered a speech about policy, not a list of unhinged grievances. They will treat it like it was normal, and try to glean some meaning from it.

To the extent that they pass judgement on the speech, it will be in the context of whether it is likely to help or hurt Republican political prospects.

A Wall Street Journal preview of the speech on Wednesday was a perfect illustration. This is how it began:

President Trump will use his State of the Union address to sell the public on the economy and unveil new measures meant to lower costs, as Republicans try to address voters’ concerns ahead of the midterm elections later this year.

The Possible Pivot

What’s my point? My point is that tonight offers our top news organizations a unique moment in which to pivot away from the distortions required to normalize the abnormal, and instead turn to something more honest.

So many people will be watching, why not validate what they saw and heard with their own eyes and ears?

I wrote recently that the news industry is fixated on increasing trust -- and that nothing makes people lose trust as much as when they see news coverage that doesn’t comport with what they themselves experienced.

Well, here’s a chance to earn some trust: Produce journalism that confirms people’s experienced reality rather than distorts what they know to be true.

And it’s not just that so many people will be watching. It’s also that so many people are now fed up with Trump and MAGA. They see through it.

The latest poll finds that six out of 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance -- including 47 percent who strongly disapprove.

And in his second term, he has done nothing that has actually improved the quality of life for Americans. He has done nothing that has improved our global standing. He has spread terror in our cities, and hunger, disease, and death abroad. He has corrupted and debased the government. He has seized near-dictatorial powers. And he’s not mentally well.

I wrote last week about how any news coverage that doesn’t situate Trump’s actions in their essential context is effectively disinformation.

I have no doubt that Trump will say things tonight that can only be adequately explained by stating clearly that he has seized authoritarian levels of power, or that he lies constantly, or that he’s a con artist, or that he’s unhinged, or that he’s corrupt, or that he’s racist, or that he’s divisive. Journalists should provide that context.

In fact, one topic alone – his inevitable pitch for the SAVE Act, the voter suppression bill before the Senate – will require all that context, and more. Trump’s push to demand proof of citizenship before voting is based on two provably false conspiracy theories – that he won the 2020 election, and that non-citizens commit widespread voter fraud. It is an attempted usurpation of states’ rights. It is intended to disenfranchise millions of voters, particularly minorities (but also women). Trump lies when he says it’s just a normal voter ID bill – this one is particularly onerous. And he lies when he says Democrats oppose it because they want noncitizens to vote.

My Version

If it were me, and I were writing up Trump’s speech tonight, I would lead with the lying. That’s the most essential context. Always. A separate “fact-check” is insufficient.

I would also point out that a joint address to Congress is ideally aimed at fostering national unity despite deep partisan divisions -- but that for Trump, it is all about delusional self-aggrandizement, taunting his enemies, and playing to his base.

I would call attention to the shocking reality that the folks listening to him in the House chamber include Republicans who have ceded Congress’s Constitutional power as a coequal branch, and members of a Supreme Court that -- despite its narrow decision on Trump’s tariffs -- has almost entirely enabled his seizure of dictator-like powers.

I would write that while Trump asserts that the state of the union is strong, he has in fact badly weakened it -- to the point where its survival as a democracy is in doubt.

I would keep an eye out for pauses and ad libs that suggest an altered mental state. Will he struggle to read the words his staff prepared for him? Will he mistake Iceland for Greenland?

And I would end with the observation that he was speaking to a country that increasingly doesn’t buy what he’s selling.