TonyCarper.com

Donald Trump has spent years manufacturing a heroic version of himself that never existed. In his political mythology, he is not merely a president. He is a warrior-president, a battlefield commander and a solitary figure of courage standing between America and its enemies. His social-media universe has depicted him with the physique of a prizefighter, the armor of a conquering general and the grave bearing of men who commanded armies. He has allowed himself to be symbolically elevated alongside George C. Marshall and George S. Patton—men who carried the lives of nations and armies on their shoulders. He has surrounded himself with images and rhetoric suggesting the stature of Medal of Honor recipients—men who ran toward gunfire, covered grenades with their bodies and refused evacuation while others remained in danger. Trump wants the portrait of Patton. What reportedly emerged in Turkey was a clown in a catering cart. According to multiple reports, Trump publicly climbed aboard the le...

### When a president’s words repeatedly prove unreliable, printing them without immediate context is not neutrality. It is the mass distribution of misinformation. Donald Trump has said so many things that were false, exaggerated, contradictory, imaginary, or abandoned within hours that his words can no longer be treated as reliable descriptions of reality. Yet much of the American press continues to place those words in headlines as though a presidential utterance automatically qualifies as verified news: **“Trump says…”** Those two words have become a journalistic escape hatch. They allow a newspaper to repeat almost anything while pretending it has taken no responsibility for whether the statement is true. Technically, the headline may be accurate—Trump did say it. But journalism is supposed to tell readers what happened, not merely record what someone claimed happened. A lie does not become news simply because the president repeats it. A fantasy does not become policy because he ca...