For days, Donald Trump’s administration has been on a media blitz to lie to reporters, the public, and the markets about how the president’s illegal war on Iran is going really well, actually. In reality, very few in the U.S. government are buying their own propaganda.
“We aren’t winning,” one senior U.S. government official tells Zeteo this week. “Why are you asking me if I think we’re winning? What a stupid question.”
According to four U.S. officials and one Trump adviser, it remains a widespread belief across the federal government, including within the Pentagon, that the Trump administration is still losing the Iran war, and that the White House’s renewed propaganda push to paint a rosier portrait of the conflict is little more than a public relations effort meant to boost Trump’s party in the lead-up to the midterm elections.
Two of these officials say one reason they are talking to Zeteo and other media outlets about how poorly the war is going for the American side is that they’re appalled at the ongoing attempt by Team Trump to, in the words of one of the officials, push “nothing but lies and distortions” about this phase of the president’s grossly unpopular conflict with Iran.