Trump generates his own fog of misinformation about the war with Iran

WASHINGTON – While every military conflict poses difficulties in understanding what is really happening on the front lines, President Donald Trump’s war against Iran presents its own unique fog of misinformation: the fabulist commander in chief himself.

In the span of just a few hours on Monday, Trump claimed that the war he unilaterally started was almost over, that Iran was two weeks away from producing a nuclear weapon last summer, that he possessed American Tomahawk missiles and used one against his own schoolchildren, that he had to attack Iran because it was about to attack the United States, that other Gulf states had joined the fight against Iran, and that, by the way, his war was not really over.

None of the factual claims were supported by evidence, and a couple of them were demonstrably false.

Doug Lute, a retired Army general and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Trump’s outright lies about the Iran war continue to degrade the U.S. relationship with its allies. “Their lies and ignorance erode trust in all of us,” he said.

“The president said that for the MAGA faithful who believe everything he says, no matter how false or fraudulent,” said Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office during Trump’s first term. “Iran doesn’t have Tomahawks. The world knows it. He did it to try to cover up the shameful fact that he murdered 170 or more Iranian schoolgirls in his capricious, uncoordinated and ill-conceived war.”

Roberto Schmidt via Getty Images

However, in stark contrast to the years-long scandal generated by former President George W. Bush’s false insistence that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” the reaction to Trump’s casual lies about the war he started without any attempt to rally public or congressional support has so far faded within a day or two.

“I think most nations gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. They took him at his word and regretted it,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon and NATO employee and now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a center-left think tank. “With Trump, nations are keeping him at arm’s length now. They are getting involved in Iran only to protect their people and their interests from being criticized at home. It is not to support Trump or the war effort.”

On Monday, Trump’s Tomahawk claim became the most egregious and easily disproven lie about the 10-day war.

Among the first people killed in Trump’s attack were 175 civilians, most of them schoolchildren, when US forces somehow attacked an elementary school near a military base in southern Iran. Numerous analyzes have shown that the weapon was an American-made Tomahawk missile, which only the United States and a handful of allies possess.

However, Trump outright fabricated the claim that Iran had Tomahawks and that it could have been one of them that hit the school. “Whether it’s Iran, which also has some Tomahawks (they wish they had more), but whether it’s Iran or anyone else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk, is very generic,” he said.

When a reporter pointed out that no one else in his administration was making that claim and asked why Trump would do it, Trump responded: “Because I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something I’m told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are… they’re used by others, as you know. A lot of other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us.”

The statement drew disbelief from a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Donald Trump has no fucking idea what he’s talking about,” said combat veteran and Democratic Senator from Arizona Mark Kelly. “I saw that statement yesterday and my reaction is: We have a commander in chief who doesn’t understand some really basic things.”

Trump White House officials, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt, did not respond to News themezone’s questions about Trump’s lie. He also did not answer the same question when asked at a press conference on Tuesday, stating instead: “The president has the right to share his opinions with the American public.”

He was then asked about another false claim by Trump: that Trump attacked Iran because Iran, within days, was going to attack the United States, and whether Trump was simply making that claim up.

Leavitt responded falsely: “The president is not making anything up.”

Trump’s invention of the Tomahawk came on the same afternoon that he first told News, about an hour before the stock markets closed, that the war with Iran was “pretty much complete.”

However, after his comments halted the latest decline in stock prices, Trump, less than two hours later, backtracked completely while speaking to House Republicans at his golf course in Doral, Florida.

“We move forward more determined than ever to achieve the definitive victory that puts an end to this long-standing danger, once and for all,” he said.

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.