If it were possible to shame President Donald Trump it could be done through a fact pattern either identical or similar to the one below. But since it is utterly impossible – and that’s why he’s loved by so many – we need to move on to just how reckless he can be as president, a job that heretofore had required careful consideration of each outward utterance, given that the president speaks as an independent branch of government. But today, Trump unleashed an attack on Truth Social that skipped right over the facts in a manner so carefree as to stand out even for Donald Trump. This time, the victim was the internationally respected news outlet Reuters, along with a division that Reuters has nothing to do with. It gets really bad, through the corruption junction we go.
Early Thursday morning, Trump posted the following on his Truth Social account:
DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study “large scale social deception.” GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!
Alrighty then. Some key things to know, first – whatever Reuters got paid with respect to this issue, it did so in 2018, or during Trump’s first term. The Trump administration paid the bill that it’s now crying to get back. And why is that?
Does large scale social deception sound like DEI? Because one gets the sense that the reflex got tweaked, that they see something woke here. This would be a good working assumption were it not for the fact that this really arises out of a Reuters News story that was critical of Elon Musk and the number of complaints various agencies had on him – which then caused Musk to ask about Reuters and government contracts, so – you know.
Mediaite promises us that this isn’t that complicated, it is just score-settling.
The contract, first flagged by MAGA influencer Ian Miles Cheong, surfaced after Musk, apparently disgruntled by a Reuters article arguing DOGE cuts were politically motivated, asked followers to “find out” how much federal money the organization had received.
Ah, yes – that makes sense. “Find out!” and then go attack whatever contracts they did get – and lo and behold look at that social deception thing (Just don’t put that it came up during Trump’s first term). This is sick and corrupt stuff. Pure retaliation and it also shows just how close Musk is to Trump. Musk gets mad about Reuters coverage of politically motivated closings, and goes at Reuters’ contracts – then Trump, the president, echoes the issue and raises it a zero. That is hard core. Below is the original Reuters piece and then below that, it gets even worse.
what do you think about this piece? https://t.co/0R4FeOkHmR
— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) February 13, 2025
Now, how can this get even worse, more corrupt? Well, Elon – and thus, also, Trump – could get the facts wrong and misreport who got the actual contract in the first place because it wasn’t the Reuters news service but to Thomson Reuters Special Services for cybersecurity research, certainly nothing to do with fooling the public or DEI.
It is one thing to be corrupt enough to go after a news organization that simply questions the political motivations behind certain government slashing, it is quite another to use issues or facts that arise from a completely independent party and put them on one’s foe (Reuters) as if it were their own. This, as Mediaite reports, is simply inexcusable and unforgiveable.
Debate over government expenditure is fair but after Musk and Trump’s intervention a contract awarded to a risk analytics firm to develop cybersecurity defenses has now been twisted into an elaborately misleading narrative about Reuters’ alleged role in state-sponsored media manipulation – a narrative that just happens to lend itself well to Trump’s media vendetta and Musk’s bid to cut costs.
Right. Very little doubt about that. Elon Musk has burned quite a trail through the government in his furious and flailing hunt for agencies and budgets to be cut – often those that either have complaints filed against Musk or are divisions that by necessity must work in and among our marginalized populations, whether migrants, LGBTQ, or even physically challenged students, all are in direct line of sight for Musk to drain from funds and go “poof” as part of his murky agenda – one that is so closely supported by Trump that he’s tweeting about “Radical Left Reuters” in a way that would otherwise get him sued for defamation given it’s not even the same division of the company.
So utterly hopeless. At least the corruption is right at the surface. You need not spend a lot of time searching through layers of false pretenses. Nope. The corruption is up top.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on “X” at @JasonMiciak and now on Bluesky.
Check out Rachel’s story on Musk’s conflicts: