The Media Is Misreading the Trump-Putin Menace
- john raymond
- May 31
- 2 min read
And every time Trump does his master's bidding, the media says he is confused, or erratic, or "just being Trump."
The most dangerous camouflage is not the lie a leader tells—it’s the lie others tell about him. In Trump’s case, the Western media has become one of his most effective shields, not because it supports him, but because it misunderstands him. In failing to diagnose the structure of his behavior, it inadvertently conceals it.
Each time Trump rewards authoritarianism or undermines a democratic institution, the press reaches for explanations that render his actions incidental. He’s tired. He’s impulsive. He’s improvising. These narratives reduce a coordinated pattern to a spectacle of personality, stripping his actions of intent and replacing motive with mood.
The phrase “just being Trump” has become a euphemism for a thousand betrayals. It permits him to operate outside normal scrutiny. No matter how many times he echoes Kremlin talking points, praises autocrats, or spreads disinformation, the fallback is always psychological, not strategic. He’s being provocative. He’s trolling. He doesn’t mean it.
But he does mean it. And the repetition alone is proof. It is the job of journalism to recognize not just what is said, but what is signaled. To chart patterns. To connect intent to effect. Yet for nearly a decade, mainstream coverage has too often reset with each Trump outburst—as if his words exist in isolation from his record, and his record exists in isolation from a broader conflict.
What results is a public kept in perpetual doubt. Even those who oppose him are trained to see each move as an anomaly. The truth becomes episodic, not systemic. And that confusion is the very soil in which asymmetric warfare thrives.
Trump does not need the press to love him. He needs them to misread him. He needs them to underestimate the continuity. To grant him deniability. To miss the point.
And so far, they are doing exactly that.
Not by siding with him, but by failing to see that he’s already taken a side—and it is not ours.
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