"Maddow: 'We Are Now in War with Iran'" Is Useless—And So Is the Media That Keeps Getting Trump Wrong
- john raymond
- Jun 21
- 2 min read
For years now, mainstream media outlets have treated Donald Trump as if he were just another politician—a loud, blustering anomaly to be covered with the same conventions, the same cadence, the same playbook that governed decades of status quo presidencies. They act surprised every time he crosses a line, issues a threat, or undermines American institutions. And now, even as he drags the United States into a war of choice with Iran, they still fail to offer anything beyond vague dramatics and performative gasps.
The recent MSNBC segment featuring Rachel Maddow—where she solemnly declares, “We are now in war with Iran”—is a perfect example. She reads the facts. She adds the gravitas. But she provides zero analysis, zero context, zero value. Instead, we get the usual MSNBC parade of passive voice and breathless handwringing.
No mention of the obvious: that Trump’s strike was long telegraphed, that it followed weeks of manufactured ambiguity, and that it served the interests of foreign strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. No mention of the underlying patterns—of how Trump routinely contradicts his own intelligence services, of how he exploits the fog of "two weeks" timelines to obscure planned escalations, or of how he coordinates with autocrats under the table while pretending to the American people that he’s still “thinking about it.”
Instead, the media marvels as if Trump just spontaneously combusted into militarism. They ask whether this means he’s “not really isolationist,” as if that’s the operative question. They frame his lies as strategic ambiguity rather than disinformation. And when the bombs fall, they treat it like a natural disaster: something that “just happened” instead of something that was built, piece by piece, in public, in plain sight, by a man they refused to call what he is—a danger to the republic and a puppet of foreign interests.
The video clip now circulating of Maddow’s “we are now at war” segment isn’t journalism. It’s theater. And it demonstrates why fewer and fewer people trust the press to understand, let alone explain, the political moment we are living in. They keep missing the story because they refuse to see what’s right in front of them: that Trump works for Putin, that this war was constructed, not stumbled into, and that their own refusal to connect the dots has made them complicit in normalizing it.
This isn’t new. They got Ukraine wrong. They got COVID wrong. They got January 6 wrong. And now they’re getting Iran wrong. What we need is clarity, courage, and truth. What we’re getting is a highlight reel of obvious statements dressed up as insight.
We are not just at war with Iran. We are at war with denial. And much of the press is still on the wrong side.
The dogshit "reporting" from Maddow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcEQoJMqSpQ
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