What should journalists do when Donald Trump continues to insist on the existence of something that is entirely imaginary? When he says something happened that didn’t? When he tells them a video shows something that it doesn’t?
I’m talking, of course, about Trump’s preposterous, entirely unsupportable claim that vandals – not his own shoddy contractors – were responsible for the botched renovation of the Reflecting Pool.
From the get-go, Trump’s version of events was wildly, transparently untrue and absurd in light of the nature and extent of the damage and the complete lack of evidence of any vandalism whatsoever.
Most of the Reflecting Pool coverage in the mainstream media has at least provided some indication that his vandalism claims are unproven and disputed.
But that’s not telling the public what’s really going on.
For one thing, these news organizations don’t sufficiently declare in their institutional voice that he’s dead wrong – they use terms like “baseless” and “without evidence.”
And even if they declared that he was wrong – or lying – that wouldn’t be enough.
Because what’s going on here is that Trump is either intentionally engaged in a massive deception campaign or, much more likely, he is delusional and actually believes something that isn’t even vaguely plausible. (Or both, I guess.)
In other words, either he’s trying to gaslight us or he’s gaslighted himself: he’s told himself so many lies that he has lost all sense of what is actually happening.
This is not normal. This is highly alarming behavior in anyone, but especially someone with so much power over life and death.
Not making that clear is the ultimate example of “sanewashing”: the act of describing insane statements in a way that makes them seem ordinary.
Treating It Like Just Another Political Dust-Up
Consider the recent reporting about U.S. attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the act and tell at least some of the truth – which was quickly followed by Trump attacking her and restating his vandalism nonsense.
A month ago, in an act of fealty to Trump, Pirro announced the indictment of David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who was caught with his hand in the pool, for felony destruction of property. Hearn had no knife and no ability to get close to where the damage had allegedly been done. Nevertheless, Pirro called it “a case with tremendous evidence” showing that Hearn “forcefully and violently” pulled up the pool’s bottom liner.
On Friday, she moved to dismiss the indictment in a 19-page document that aggressively refuted Trump’s vandalism narrative, based on Interior Department documents that she said had only recently been turned over. (She could have submitted a one-line dismissal, but chose not to.)
So now we had confirmation, from inside the beast, that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”
The headlines should have said: “Evidence from Trump’s U.S. attorney further undermines his absurd claim of ‘vandalism’”.
And once Trump doubled down, the headlines should have said: “Trump lashes out at Pirro for undermining his wild Reflecting Pool ‘vandalism’ claim” or “Trump sticks to his made-up Reflecting Pool ‘vandalism’ claim despite DOJ debunking”.
Instead, the first New York Times article duly noted that Pirro’s account “directly contradicted the president’s repeated claim” and characterized that claim as “false”. But there was no indication of how ridiculous and unfounded it was.
The initial article in the Washington Post weakly noted that DOJ was now “contradicting Trump.” Then it described how the “fight” over the pool “has unexpectedly emerged as a major flash point in Trump’s second term” – situating the story in a political frame, while avoiding any hint of how delusional Trump’s claims are.
The New York Times headlined its Saturday article: “In Dropping Reflecting Pool Case, Pirro Draws Trump’s Wrath”, casting it as a she-said-he-felt story. Author Glenn Thrush wrote that Pirro’s filing “raised innate doubts” about what the article’s subhead referred to as “Trump’s pet theory.”
The Post on Monday published an article headlined “How Trump’s claims of vandalism at the renovated Reflecting Pool crumbled,” which was seriously messed up because the claim was never cohesive in the first place. Dan Diamond, Liam Bowman, Salvador Rizzo and Jake Spring wrote that Trump’s vandalism claim “has morphed into a political headache.”
Eventually they mentioned that “Outside observers for weeks had dismissed claims of widespread vandalism,” and they linked to the Post’s own July 16 analysis of imagery that “concluded that the basin’s peeling was probably caused by application errors.”
But there was no characterization of Trump’s claims as absurd from the very beginning, and no attempt at explaining why he continues to cleave to them.
The latest articles from the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and the Times are about Trump’s conflict with Pirro, and treat his vandalism claim like they would any other political statement.
And to be clear, Trump continues to make ridiculous claims. At a Monday event ostensibly about his new executive order creating a “Military Spouse Commission” (with defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s spouse as chair) Trump spent eight minutes talking complete nonsense about the pool.
He insisted that “when it was completed, it was perfect. But then somebody went in and cut it.” And presumably referring to a video he shared on Truth Social on Saturday, he said: “Now, we have photographs or tapes, like moving cameras, right? [sic] We have them where people are on the side, cutting it with a box knife.”
The video shows no such thing, just three people putting their hands into the water.
Trump’s Active Imagination
Trump’s vandalism claim is hardly the only example of Trump asserting things that are absurd and only true in his imagination.
I found it utterly jaw-dropping a couple weeks ago when Trump, witnessing the return of four soldiers killed in his pointless war, declared: “All of them said very strongly, ‘We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.'”
That demanded more explanation than simply noting that “The president did not say how he knew the fallen soldiers’ views,” which is what the Times did in the third paragraph of an article headlined: “Speaking for Fallen Soldiers, Trump Says They Supported the Iran War”.
I much preferred Inae Oh’s article for Mother Jones headlined “Trump Puts Words in the Mouths of Dead Soldiers”, in which she wrote “There is no evidence that the service members killed, as Trump so confidently claimed, ever said or believed this.” And she provided the essential context: “It conveniently happens to be one of the exceedingly few talking points Trump has had for continuing an increasingly unpopular war on all his own.”
And Trump, of course, has frequently made ridiculous assertions about the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz – which we have already won and already control, except when we haven’t. He has repeatedly threatened to unleash massive destruction on Iran’s civilian infrastructure (a war crime), then ostensibly changed his mind based on who knows what. We certainly know he imagined that the war in Iran would be easy.
Journalism’s Job
What’s the point of having all that vaunted “access” to Trump and the White House if reporters won’t acknowledge, investigate and address the extent of Trump’s connection to reality?
And Congressional reporters have an obligation, too. They should ask every Republican they can find if they believe what Trump is saying – and what they think is going on in his head.
On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Kirstin Welker didn’t actually ask MAGA Sen. John Kennedy that, but he answered anyway, saying “The president says it was caused by vandals. I don’t know whether he really believes that, or it’s part of his political messaging, or he’s just thinking out loud. You and I both know the president well. He exists loudly, and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought. I’m not saying he doesn’t really believe it, I just don’t know.”
Back in April, I was hopeful that doubts about Trump’s mental health would become routine background in news stories relating his more unhinged statements.
Recall that the Times actually published an article by chief White House correspondent Peter Baker directly addressing Trump’s mental fitness, writing that “even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as ‘lunatic’ and ‘clearly insane.’”
But soon enough it was like that article never appeared.
For now, my proposed headlines (above) using words like absurd and wild — which I think are actually understated — are probably still too loaded for mainstream news organizations.
That’s got to change. Those news organizations need to provide the essential context when Trump makes preposterous claims. They must stop the sanewashing. And that’s going to require them to address Trump’s relationship to reality and use words like delusional.