Trump makes highly consequential decisions based on misinformation

President Donald Trump and his most vocal supporters have been using disinformation, fake videos, and mental gymnastics to try to spin the US military’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites as a complete and total victory that signals the end of a war instead of the beginning. On Saturday night, with the B-2 stealth bombers that dropped a dozen GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs on the Fordow underground nuclear facility just beginning their flights back to the US, Trump declared the mission a complete success. But rather than relying on information from his own intelligence agencies, satellite imagery, or on-the-ground reporting, Trump instead posted on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an anonymous account that claims to conduct open source intelligence investigations. “Fordow is gone,” the account, which lists the website of a Zionist clothing company in its biography, wrote, providing no further information. Trump followed this up by claiming in a press conference that Fordow had been “completely and totally obliterated.” It immediately became clear that the triumphant declarations were likely premature, with Trump’s own military officials pushing back against his assessment. “It would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there,” said General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Israeli military officials told The New York Times that while the facility had sustained significant damage, it had not been destroyed. Additionally, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at the Fordow facility had been moved before the bombing, while the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency told The New York Times that the highly enriched uranium previously stored at the Isfahan facility had been moved before it was targeted by US strikes. Trump’s early declarations of success on Truth Social set the tone, though—and appear to have inspired others. Fox News host Sean Hannity, among the loudest proponents for bombing Iran in recent weeks, posted the same phrase the account Trump screenshotted did—”Fordow is gone”—on his Instagram account, alongside a video of a massive explosion. The video, however, does not show Fordow and is instead of a December 2024 Israeli strike on a missile base in Tartous, Syria. Hannity’s post, which remains on the platform, had been viewed more than 5 million times as of Monday morning. I hope Congress still relies on objective reality when making highly consequential decisions because Trump and his cronies do not.