The Extreme Extent of Trump’s Ignorance and Misinformation

6 August 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On August 6th, the Washington Post headlined “Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over Iran missile depletion concerns: At a Camp David summit this weekend, President Trump demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over extreme munitions shortages.” Their report opened:

President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.

The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days, one of the sources said.

Trump said Monday that he had ordered and subsequently called off “the biggest attack since World War II,” pending claims of new negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz.

The president asserted overnight that the United States has “massive amounts” of munitions, saying in a post on Truth Social that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.” The “‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” he added.

While the United States has announced new production agreements for some of the most critical munitions, such as Patriot air defense missiles, the munitions themselves can take as long as two years to produce, and there’s no immediate relief in sight for the shortages.

All of this had been known for months — including the crucial fact that “the munitions themselves can take as long as two years to produce, and there’s no immediate relief in sight for the shortages.” However, Trump’s main source of news is his obsessive, almost nonstop, viewing of the neoconservative Republican Fox ‘News’, which is aimed at MAGA Republicans, in order to keep those people loyal. Trump also looks every day at the front page of the New York Times (whose audience is almost exactly half that of the Republican Party’s cable news channel Fox), but Trump doesn’t like to read, much prefers spoken ‘news’, and he distrusts “liberal media,” whereas he trusts Fox. Fox is controlled by the extremely powerful Republican billionaire Murdoch family, while the NYT is controlled by the far less powerful liberal centi-millionaire Sulzberger family. Trump also occasionally views other mainstream (billionaire and centi-millionaire controlled) U.S. news media. Consequently, since all of those media are neoconservative (supporters of increasing the U.S. empire, especially for it to grow to include China, Russia, and Iran), he might really have believed it each time he promised to destroy Iran. He fired Tulsi Gabbard and the few other non-neocons in his Administration. He was born a centi-millionaire if not a billionaire, and always surrounded himself by people who agreed with him.

Consequently, it is entirely credible that Trump is only now coming to recognize that his policies regarding Iran were based on falsehoods. If he now escalates against Iran, then the Arab monarchs upon whom the U.S. Government has depended will no longer be U.S. allies and might even be overthrown. But if he doesn’t escalate against Iran, then everyone will know that Iran has won the war that America started against Iran on 21 June 2025. He’s not going to be able to save face, no matter what he does now.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.