President Trump's Venezuela policy has many problems. The risk of invading a country and extracting its foreign leader, which is an act of war. Claiming to use war powers for oil, something that U U .
S. presidents of both parties have denied over a series of wars because at the end of the day, we may be a divided country, but most Americans agree that we don't want to risk American lives just for cheaper oil. There's also the total failure to plan for the long term after taking Maduro out of the country.
So there's a lot of that stuff. We've covered some of it. Tonight we're going to turn to another different and specific problem, how Trump and his team often see more focused on the PR and sort of online hyping of this operation than the actual war powers and bombing that they're conducting.
The White House has released pictures for promotion on Trump's social media and OTHER SITES. WE OF COURSE SAW THIS PHOTO, MSNOW HASN'T INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED IT BUT HAS BEEN WIDELY SEEN AS THE REAL PHOTO FROM THE PRESIDENT SHOWING OFF HIS FOTO FROM THE PRESIDENT'S FOOTING, AND THEY PUT THESE PHOTOS OUT VERY QUICKLY AS PART OF THEIR NARRATIVE OF LOOK HOW THEY'RE OVERSEAS IS WHAT THEY'RE DOING. AND THIS OPERATION KILLED DOZENS, IT PUT AMERICANS IN HARM'S WAY, REMEMBER THE U .
S. OVERSEAS 17 INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES WITH ALL SORTS OF INFO AND INTEL, AND YET rather than using that material during the raid, Trump's team took space away from those sources and had this odd feed up of X, the social media app formerly Twitter, during this activity. You can see the emoji there.
You can see someone typed in Venezuela in the search bar. We don't know if they had anyone on hand to, you know, translates Spanish of what people might have been tweeting, whether it was true or not. Another angle shows X right behind the CIA director.
This unusual use of cherished space. On the big screen in that security setting has drawn all kinds of mockery and concern. Trump's overall glee reflects an interest in the ongoing spectacle and his own personal power over the substance and the stakes.
A writer, Don Moynihan, likens all of this to a new clictatorship. Trump aides not just using social media to shape a narrative, but many of its members seem to be, quote, deeply addicted to it. The images coming from Homeland Security under Nome, for example, the way Pete Hegseth, who was a big sort of media guy before all this, TV and social media, have already drawn mockery long before Venezuela because it has been very noticeable how interested these people with very serious jobs seem to be daily, on a daily basis, obsessed with PR and social media.
And they got this brutal South Park Mockery. Guys, this is Pete Hexteth at the Department of War. We're here to infiltrate this police station and extract a P-O-Y because that's what we do.
That's what Homeland Security does. Be sure to like and subscribe, guys. We've got.
. . No, no, no, no, no.
This is not your content. Everyone like and subscribe to the Department of War. Acting like a tough guy, posting it around the world.
Making lots of Content like a little teenage girl We can see that's a parody we had to bleep out some part but this is how they're actually conducting THE D . O . J.
OFFICIAL UNDER TRUMP AT CIVIL RIGHTS SAYS WHAT KIND OF CONTENT DO MY FOLKS WANT TO SEE MORE OF TO LIKE AND SHARE, LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE AS THEY SAID IN THE MOCKERY version. DOJ's leader, Pam Bondy, brought notes to a Senate hearing that seemed completely focused on getting social media zingers, which senators noticed. RESPOND WITH COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT FAR-RITE INTERNET TALKING POINTS REALLY IS NOT VERY HELPFUL HERE.
THIS TENDENCY HAS BEEN ON DISPLAY. THE WHITE HOUSE USES KIND OF MISLEADING TECH SLOP AND VERY OFFENSIVE ATTACKS TO PUT OUT RIDICULOUS MATERIAL. THESE ARE ON TAXPAYER-FUNDED ACCOUNTS.
THIS IS NOT SOME CONCERN ABOUT CAMPAIGN TACTICS. YOU CAN SAY WHAT YOU WANT, BUT THIS THIS IS YOUR TAX DOLLARS BEING USED FOR THESE KIND OF RIDICULOUS AND ON THE LOWER RIGHT RACIST IMAGRY. THE PROPAGANDA ALSO, OF COURSE, IS DESIGNED TO SHOCK AND THUS HELP IT GO VIRAL.
HERE'S A DHS POST WHERE THEY COMPARED IMMIGRANT ENFORCEMENT TO THE HALO VIDEO GAME, EXCEPT THAT'S NOT, OF COURSE, ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS. IT'S ABOUT PLAYERS WHO FIGHT OR ROUND UP ACTUAL PARASITIC NON-HUMAN ALIENS. THE PROCESS IS Nihilistic.
ALL OF THIS HAS A DEHUMANIZING EFFECT, NOTES AN ATLANTIC ARTICLE STORIES ABOUT PEOPLE OR COUNTRIES IN CONFLICT BECOME OBSTRACT, BURIED UNDER A PILE OF MEMES AND RECURSIVE REFERENCES THAT EXIST FOR LITTLE MORE THAN THIS SORT OF, QUOTE, SCROLL BY ENTERTAINMENT. LIKE SO MANY TRUMP OFFENSES, HE'S NOT HIDING IT. THE LONGTIME REALITY SHOW FIGURE LIKENS, AGAIN A LIFE AND DEATH OPERATION WHICH COULD HAVE COST AMERICAN LIVES, THEY CERTAINLY WERE IN DANGER AND KILLED DOZENS OF PEOPLE ON THE GROUND IN VENEZUELA.
HE LIKENS IT ALL NATURALLY TO A FICTIONAL TV show. If you would have seen what happened, I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. But it's not a TV show, even if it's on TV.
And it is not a harmless entertaining exchange of supposedly clever quips online, even though nowadays everything we can see and share does also exist online. There's a bigger problem here, it is corrosive and on the spectrum of how outraged people might want to be, it is clearly worse when American soldiers are being put in harm's way, sometimes specifically in the pursuit of more clicks for the president and his aides with their self-videoing phones. WELL, I THINK IT'S THE OBSESSION WITH CONTENT A ANY COST AND NOW THE COST OF THIS OBSESSION IS GETTING higher and higher and higher.
Uh, uh, governments are getting toppled. People are getting killed. So where does that end?
And that inversion and the kind of, um, you know, the, the brain pickling, there's so many smart people have had their brains absolutely rotted by social media and the humanity is gone. Um, the common sense is gone. And you know, we're, we're, we're in a bit of an absurdist nightmare now.
Hmm. You mentioned cost, war and national security operations have the highest secrecy. Right.
Um, for many obvious reasons I don't need to re explain the rush during an operation and right after to be sharing without much review. We know there's not a lot of review. If you post something within 30 minutes of it happening, uh, we know there was very little thoughtful layers of review.
And that puts things at risk because our adversaries might learn something from who was in or out of the room and how far they had to travel. There's something called mosaic theory where if you get random YOU CAN START PIECING IT TOGETHER TO SAY NOTHING ON WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH TECH NOW. SHOULD WE TAKE SERIOUSLY THE RISK THAT THE RUSH BY THE TOP PEOPLE ALL THE WAY UP TO THE president to get this material out could sooner or later endanger our people in the field?
Well, I think the whole thing is careening off a cliff. And I think it's, you know, as a few people have pointed out and, And, you know, you've slightly hinted at. It's not obvious that there's a plan behind any of these moments.
Like we're being fed a series of moments that are themselves disconnected moments that have no follow up. And I'm put in the mind of this raid that happened in the fall in Chicago, when they came down on the south side of Chicago, a helicopter landed on the roof of this apartment COMPLEX, THEY ANNOUNCED THAT THEY WERE ARRESTING ALL THESE TRIN DE ARAGUA. GANG MEMBERS, HALF-NAKED KIDS WERE PULLED OUT AND ZIP tied and left out in the cold.
The net consequence of that was nothing. Nobody was indicted. Two people, I believe, were, you know, had some kind of immigration.
I MEAN, THE WHOLE THING IS A HARD, LIKE PEOPLE'S LIVES WERE COMPLETELY DESTROYED JUST FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA MOMENT. IS THERE AN ANTIDOTE TO that dynamic where spectacle literally seems to supplant reality? It's hard to figure out what it is.
I would say deep, urgent media literacy, like Like, understanding, especially if you're older and you didn't grow up in social media, understanding how to take in provocative pieces of information and understand how seriously to take them or not to take them, the problem is you can't completely ignore them because people are getting shot in the face as a result of this, right? The point of the Minneapolis eschalation was to have maybe not this precise moment but a moment like this that could provoke conflict. And do you think Trump seems to be the same or getting worse?
Because when he starts posting 50, 100, 150 times, you talk about being pickled. That's more extreme than he even used to be. Well, I think the problem is that in order to keep people engaged, both outraging them and exciting them, the stakes have to increase.
Right. And so the question is, what happens next? What's now good enough beyond, you know, shooting a mother of three in the face, frog marching a foreign leader off in a Nike tracksuit?
Like, what's the next thing you have to do? And that goes to these sort of addicted mediated environment we're in, which Marshall McLuhan or anyone would say is different from a slower thing. You know, long form watching an hour is very different from that.
Let's end on a lighter note. We all need it. What's your favorite reality show?
Favorite, I think The Traders right now. I think has the kind of light touch we could all use in this moment.
