I find it very unlikely the US could keep a lid on 200 deaths and saying it’s six. Not for more than a week or so. People’s families are going to wonder where their loved ones are. Hospital workers, morgue workers, life insurance companies, flight crews, people are going to talk, and share pictures.

If you state reasons for doing something that gives everyone a thing to look at to see if you are succeeding or failing.

Trump is, above all else, a master in marketing. He has complete confidence that, through marketing skills, he will be able to take credit for anything good that comes, and all failures can be either ignored or blamed on someone else.

But stating reasons up front makes it harder to do this.

I deleted Facebook maybe two years ago. One of the last things I saw was a very obviously AI generated image of six or seven soldiers that had lost the same leg and all had it replaced with a prosthetic at exactly the same point, with some caption about “let’s get some likes for our wounded warriors!” Followed by dozens of comments in support, I assume all were bots.