Trump's refusal to accept unwelcome reality is his greatest weakness of all

Independent

5 hours ago

'Fake news!' It's been a while since we last heard that phrase from Donald Trump – this time, in response to a leak from the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that Operation Midnight Hammer had not, after all, 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear drive.
Trump is not happy and has said as much. On the White House lawn he told reporters that: 'CNN is scum and so is MSDNC [his favorite insult for MSNBC, referencing the Democrat National Committee]. And frankly, the networks aren't much better. It's all fake news!'
Even more touchy than usual, he also threw in an F-bomb, a little bunker buster of his own about the Iranians and the Israelis. On social media, he went full caps lock: 'FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!'
All very shouty, all very Trumpian, as if he were back on the campaign trail. He's always been like that, like Humpty Dumpty up on his wall, claiming that the truth is whatever he wants it to be, and that also happens to be what the public wants it to be – except here, of course, some 56 per cent of Americans disagreed with the bombing raids. It ain't enough for him to just claim the obvious success of the raids, which did damage the Iranian facilities, even if they haven't been 'completely destroyed', or just to refuse to comment on leaks. The White House released a tetchy statement that the DIA's assessment was "flat-out wrong" and had been leaked by "a low-level loser in the intelligence community".
For Trump, everything is personal, and nothing is ever dignified. The anger is palpable, the tantrum real, and yet another sign that this personality isn't able to cope with alleged facts. He is one of those strange people who tries to make the world as he would wish it to be rather than accept it for what it is. Not unlike the now resurgent false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, or that foreign countries pay tariffs, his seeming refusal to accommodate reality is doing vast damage to the fabric of American life, not least because he's created a cult following who are prepared to take his every word as gospel. For them, the world is whatever Trump would like it to be.
Common sense dares not intrude in such circumstances, and certainly not in this administration. Question Trump, as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard inadvertently did the other day, and you're bawled out or fired. Gabbard stated to Congress that Iran wasn't that near to making a nuclear bomb, and found herself publicly upbraided by the president. It would not be surprising that some public-spirited DIA official knew how Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would react to the news about the alleged partial success of the mission, and suppress and deny it. The American public needs to know, and the president needs to be confronted with it, even when his first reaction is to shoot the messenger.
But common sense does tell us Operation Midnight Hammer wasn't a complete success, nor could it ever be. The Iranians knew it was coming, or might be, and the known nuclear sites had already been bombarded by the Israelis. The prudent thing in such circumstances would be to move whatever can be moved to safer and more secret places. There were satellite images of long queues of lorries at the mountain site of Fordo, maybe waiting to extract those 400 kilograms of precious enhanced uranium. That material may well have escaped total destruction. And the know-how and expertise embedded in the brains of the Iranian scientists and technicians have also mostly escaped the American and Israeli attacks.
There is no complete military solution to the Iranian nuclear threat that could ever be achieved militarily. It could be done by encouraging a counter-revolution in Tehran and installing a more friendly government, as the Israelis wish, but regime change doesn't seem that inevitable, at least not imminently, and it would require further US intervention, which Trump has widely ruled out.
Operation Midnight Hammer was a success, but not the solution to the problem, as it could never be. Trump knows this, which is why he initiated the negotiations with the Iranians a few months ago. His instinct for a new deal was correct, even if things stalled and were then wrecked by the Israeli bombing attacks. Trump is so cantankerous and so vain that he seems unable to enjoy his victories for what they are and constantly has to exaggerate them, gold plate them – quite literally, in the case of the Oval Office – and make claims for them that are so extreme they can never be true in the real world. Everything has to be complete, total, 100 per cent, utter, and anyone who contests that is a liar and a traitor.
He is ridiculously insecure and disconcertingly haunted by his rivals, the Clintons, Barack Obama, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump so longs for, and Joe Biden, who did beat him in 2020. He prefers to live in a fantasy world and parades the cynical royal fawning he gets from Sir Keir Starmer and NATO's secretary general, Mark Rutte, as genuine love and respect. He's a man-child, and a dangerous one. We knew all that, of course, but he's just reminded us about it yet again. We've got the best part of four years of this, you know.