How Trump and Musk are suffocating the US press with lies: The state is being flooded

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung How Trump and Musk are suffocating the US press with lies: The state is being flooded Nina Rehfeld • 2 hours • 4 minutes reading time "Flood the zone" is how then Trump advisor Steve Bannon described his strategy during his first term of office to put the press and society out of action - with an overwhelming volume of information that makes it impossible to formulate a coherent opposition (although, as the news portal "Vox" notes, Vladimir Putin is the one who has been using this kind of information snowstorm for much longer). Protesters against Donald Trump and Elon Musk in Raleigh, North Carolina. A constant stream of lies Following Bannon's motto, nonstop and constant stream of lies are also the means of communication of the US government under Trump. What used to be a government press conference has mutated into a fake news fireworks display with Trump's spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. It started with the statement that 50 million dollars had been stopped for condoms in Gaza. The Washington Post has shown in detail that the sum is plucked out of thin air: The USA also supports health care and AIDS prevention as part of its international development aid. According to the WaPo, a five-year health program in Gaza planned by the State Department costs 50 million dollars, and the contractor claims that condoms are not being supplied. But 50 million dollars for condoms simply sounds too good for Trump's fake propaganda to ignore. It continued with the supposed "subsidization" of the Springer-Verlag portal "Politico" with more than eight billion dollars. In reality, it is about all media subscriptions that employees of the US government have taken out in recent years; in the case of "Politico" and employees of the agency USAID, which is being harassed by Trump's thugs, it is about 44,000 dollars in two years. "Retro-futurism" and "Mar-a-Gaza" These are just two of countless examples of official lies. The "Columbia Journalism Review" speaks of a "hard-to-process flood of news produced by President Trump and shadow president Elon Musk". "There is so much news that we can't really do it all justice," writes the "Free Press" portal. To name just a few: the (currently suspended) Tiktok ban; the rigorous tearing down of inclusion and equal opportunity initiatives; the "retro-futurism" (according to the "New York Times") of Trump's colonial fantasies about Greenland, Panama and Canada; the raids by the immigration authorities ICE, which also target citizens, those with residency permits and indigenous people; the (also immediately suspended) trade war with Mexico and Canada; plans for a "Mar-a-Gaza", as the "Free Press" calls Trump's vision of an American takeover of the Gaza Strip; the dismantling of supposedly "woke" institutions such as the health authorities CDC and NIH and the aforementioned development aid agency USAID and the Ministry of Education by the conspiracy theorist, bureaucracy-hater and richest man in the world, Elon Musk, commissioned by Trump. The critical US media are focusing their attention on him, the shadow president, who is striking in the fog of lies on Trump's behalf; on him and his "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), created by Trump decree, on whose behalf a few very young engineers and computer specialists are gaining access to the computers of the American federal government, including the Ministry of Finance. Musk promised "transparency". But there is no question of that in the attacks. Journalists have brought to light how Musk and his people are proceeding. "Normalizes hatred against Indians" As Jonathan Swan reports in the "New York Times", they used threats and intimidation to force their way into the computers of federal authorities. They entered the employees' offices, questioned them, and some of them refused to give their own names. The tech magazine "Wired" has identified six young men between the ages of 19 and 24 who work in Musk's companies. One of them, an engineer named Marko Elez, had, as the "Wall Street Journal" found out, posted racist posts on Musk's X. For example, it said: "Normalizes hatred against Indians," or: "I couldn't be paid to marry outside of my own ethnic group." Elez withdrew from Musk's team after his comments became known. At Musk's instigation (Musk organized a vote on X, which went in Elez's favor) and after an intervention by Vice President J. D. Vance, Elez returned immediately. "Stupid comments on social networks shouldn't ruin a young man's life," said Vance, whose wife Usha is the daughter of Indian immigrants. After his comments became known, Elez withdrew from Musk's team. At Musk's instigation (Musk organized a vote on X that went in Elez's favor) and after an intervention by Vice President J. D. Vance, Elez returned immediately. "Stupid comments on social networks should not ruin a young man's life," said Vance, whose wife Usha is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Meanwhile, Slate magazine reports that Berlin-based data analyst Travis Brown has identified further connections between Musk's DOGE shock troops and right-wing extremist circles on X, which are about the expulsion of "non-white Europeans" and alleged "Zionist world domination." Numerous publications point out that many of Musk's activities, including the dismantling of USAID, are illegal and unconstitutional. Vox lists a whole series of such violations of the law. The Washington Post, citing experts, notes that Musk and his people are acting "outside the rules of office and constitutional controls." The contempt for constitutional law must be stopped before it is too late, says the New York Times in an editorial calling for resistance to Trump and Musk's march through: "Don't be distracted. Don't be overwhelmed. Don't be paralyzed and drawn into chaos." The paper complains about the "disturbing silence, even docility" that is evident in civil society, "from business to universities to parts of the media corporations." The president's actions must be pursued and, if they "cross moral or legal boundaries, clearly questioned." But "Flooding the Zone" is effective here too. So many of the DOGE interventions are "so blatantly illegal," says Georgetown University law professor David Super in the Washington Post, that Musk and Trump are likely to assume that "the system cannot respond to all this concentrated illegality." However, New York Times commentator Ezra Klein believes that all of this will only be successful if the illusion of strength created by the lies of "Flood the Zone" is taken at face value. Trump is behaving like a king because he is too weak to rule as president. "The real danger," says Klein, "is that he makes us believe he has power that he does not have."