When it comes to stretching the threads of truth, Trump seems to have met his match in the heart of the Iranian capital of Tehran. On Thursday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released a video hailing Iran’s “victory” over Israel and the United States, and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd says “Trump was shocked, shocked at this blatant lie.”
“As a man of great faith, he is not supposed to lie,” the president said on Truth Social.
This, said Dowd, was from a president who’d bragged that the strikes had “OBLITERATED” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, only to be fact-checked when CNN’s Natasha Bertrand and her colleagues broke the story of a preliminary classified U.S. report suggesting the strikes had actually set Iran back by a few months. The Times later confirmed her scoop. Later, CNN revealed the military didn’t even use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s most prime nuclear targets.
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But Dowd notes “Trump went on to his usual authoritarian etiquette lesson, complaining that the proper response by Khamenei to getting hit with 14 30,000-pound bombs should have been: ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’”
Trump claims he deserves gratitude because he stopped Israeli and U.S. forces from killing the ayatollah where he was hiding. He said that it was he who made Israel recall a group of planes targeting Tehran.
“I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH,” Trump claims. “… I wish the leadership of Iran would realize that you often get more with HONEY than you do with VINEGAR. PEACE!!!”
Nobody’s confirmed this claim yet, but Dowd notes “Mr. Honey” was already moving on to post “a typically vinegary post abruptly cutting off ‘ALL’ trade talks with Canada.
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There’s a new element to the nonsense today, though, Dowd warns. The problem with Trump’s “untruthful hyperbole” now is that “he’s getting help on his alternate universe from all the new partisan reporters in the White House briefing room who are eager to shill for him.”
“So many Americans still have questions about the 2020 election,” one reporter fawned at a news conference on Friday. She went on to ask Trump would be appointing someone at D.O.J. to investigate judges “for the political persecution of you, your family and your supporters during the Biden administration?”
“I love you,” Trump beamed to the young woman. “Who are you?”
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Dowd says she a reporter for “Mike Lindell of ‘MyPillow’ fame, who has his own ‘news’ network.”
“Talk about fluffing your pillows,” Dowd said.
Read the full Times column at this link.