“You suggested Iran bombed its own elementary school with a missile only America sells. You are the only person in your government saying this. Why?”
Trump’s response: “Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with it.”
165 girls. Ages 7-12.
That’s what accountability journalism looks like.
Not softball questions. Not access journalism. Not protecting your White House credential.
Going for the jugular on behalf of dead children.
So the report came back and said you lost 2020 and are a confirmed pedo.
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
The White House just blamed an intern for the worst information warfare defeat of the 21st century.
Here is the sequence. Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted on social media that a US Navy-escorted oil tanker had successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz. The claim was false. No escort had occurred. The White House confirmed this. Wright deleted the post. The administration blamed a “low-level staffer” for the inaccurate publication.
Before the deletion, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf screenshotted it and posted fifteen words that have now been seen by over one million people: “An oil tanker crossed Strait of Hormuz escorted by US Navy ships? Maybe on PlayStation!”
Twenty-one thousand likes. 4,700 retweets. One million views. The most engaged Iranian government post of the war. And it was accurate. The escort did not happen. The American post that claimed it did was retracted. The Iranian post that mocked it stands.
A low-level staffer published a claim about the most strategically sensitive waterway on Earth from a cabinet secretary’s official account during the most intense military campaign since 2003, and nobody in the chain of command reviewed it before publication. That is not a staffing error. That is an institutional failure in a government prosecuting a war where information moves faster than corrections.
The oil market moved on the claim before it was deleted. WTI crashed from $119.50 to $87 on a cascade of de-escalation signals that included escort announcements. The escort that was announced did not happen. The price that moved on it did. The correction that followed has not reversed the price. The market is now trading at a level partially determined by a social media post that no longer exists, authored by a person the White House will not name, published from an account belonging to a secretary who apparently did not approve it.
Meanwhile, the physical Strait remains unchanged. Seven hundred tankers queued. Visible transits: 2 to 3 per day. Seven P&I clubs withdrawn. Zero reinstated. A few dozen Iranian mines confirmed in the water by US intelligence, with 80 to 90% of mine-laying vessels still intact. The 31 autonomous IRGC commands continue firing. The Supreme Leader is a cardboard cutout at his own rally. The IEA just proposed the largest emergency reserve release in history because the Strait the staffer claimed was open is not open.
Iran did not hack an American account. Iran did not plant disinformation. Iran waited for America to publish its own false claim, watched America delete it, and then broadcast the deletion to the world. The information warfare victory cost Iran nothing. A screenshot and fifteen words.
The United States has three carrier strike groups, eleven heavy bombers, and the most powerful military in human history deployed to reopen a strait that a low-level staffer accidentally admitted is still closed. The staffer’s crime was not posting inaccurate information. It was posting the aspiration before the achievement. The escort was supposed to happen. It has not. And now the world knows it has not because Washington told them first and Tehran made sure they remembered.
PlayStation. One deleted post. One unnamed staffer. And the Strait is still closed.
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
