I don’t know why we’re still surprised.
On April 11th, President Trump tweeted:
North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.
— Donald J. Trump, @realDonaldTrump, Apr 11, 2017
Later that same day, President Trump said more in an interview with Fox Business News.
I don’t want to talk about it. We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you.
Well, the Navy doesn’t have an Armada, but the administration issued an unsigned press release saying the USS Carl Vinson and its strike group had been ordered north. Not an armada, and there aren’t any submarines, but an aircraft carrier and its strike group is pretty big. You might even call it ‘huge’.
Adm. Harry Harris, National Security Advisor McMaster, White House Press Spokesman Spicer, and Secretary of Defense Mattis all backed up the story that the strike group was already steaming north. They all used remarkably similar words, but they gave out pictures and everything.
Except that they were all lying. The Carl Vinson strike group steamed south, not north, and they’re already off the coast of Australia, thousands of miles away from either Korea, joining in a previously scheduled exercise. This has been reported in The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other sources.
So all these dedicated public servants were lying, and they were lying to America.
Why do I say that? Wasn’t Trump hoping to fool North Korea? Was this another of his famous business deals? Was public discourse just collateral damage?
No. Russia, China, and North Korea already knew the US carrier group was steaming south. They’re not stupid; they sent planes out to watch. They knew perfectly well Trump was simply lying. He wasn’t going to fool them.
Trump bragged to the press, and had his administration lying about what our own government was doing. That’s a whole new level of lie. Ignore the war-mongering for a second. This undercuts the foundation of democracy: an informed electorate. This is much worse than it sounds.
The news sources are going on about how Trump is unreliable. That’s true, but not the real point. This level of lying undercuts important principles. And Trump probably has no idea.
