The Trump White House generated outrage and disgust several weeks ago when it released a short video combining cliched Hollywood war movie clips, bizarre anime style AI generated video and actual footage of US ordinance blowing up targets in the Persian Gulf and Iran. The video was shredded in the media for the crass use of slick Hollywood content from a completely different context and childish looking cartoons that were completely inappropriate as references in any public communication describing actions that risked the lives of US military forces and actually killed Iranians.
If critics were outraged two weeks ago when these types of videos were first released to the public, they should be absolutely crapping their pants in fear from the content of a story published by NBC reporters on March 25, 2026.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-receives-daily-video-montage-briefing-iran-war-rcna263912The key of the story is this:
Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.
The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”
But the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.
(snip>
They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.
The NBC report didn't actually state this, but it certainly seems plausible that the too-tacky-for-Tik-Tok videos first pushed to the public by the White House media office might in fact be EXACTLY the types of videos the President of the United States is being provided every day about his war. The brevity. The confusing intermixing of Hollywood film clips and meme content amid reconnaissance videos captured by drones as targets blow up and people die.
So here America sits, in the middle of a US-initiated war that no one fourteen months ago thought anyone would be insane enough to launch. The American government launched this war amid a government shutdown, when crucial law enforcement and public safety departments are understaffed while the level of threat facing the country is arguably the highest it has been in twenty five years since September 11, 2001. The country is saddled with a President whose attention span is so crippled he cannot be bothered to read a briefing on his war but instead requires a meme-style video montage peppered with enough gore to spike his interest before he'll consider ingesting any information.
Because he likes to watch television.
If citizens and elected officials in a position to actually DO something to correct the danger posed by a senile idiot who is taken seriously by all of the wrong people need something to watch to trigger an epiphany, there's no more appropriate recommendation than a watch of the 1979 movie Being There, directed by Hal Ashby and starring Peter Sellers, adapted from the 1971 book by the same name by Jerzy Kosinski.
Seller's character, Chance, is a quiet, sixty-something man employed as a live-in gardener in the mansion of an elderly wealthy man. As the movie begins, Chance goes through the initial part of of his daily routine that involves gardening, eating breakfast and watching television. A lot of television. Sesame Street. Morning exercise shows. It dawns quickly on the viewer that something with Chance is "off." After Chance is informed by the housekeeper Louise that the "old man" has passed away, Chance's reaction makes it clear he has, shall we say, PROFOUND cognitive limitations.
A pair of lawyers handling the deceased owner's affairs visit the house to scope out the property for resale then encounter Chance in the home, figure out he has no claim to the old man's money, quickly realize he is cognitively stunted as well, then inform him he's got to leave. Chance is essentially pushed to the street and into a modern world with which he is completely unsuited to engage on any level.
As it turns out, Chance lived in Washington DC. He spends his first day wandering through the ghetto that evolved around the mansion that has cocooned him all his life, inadvertently encounters drug dealers, asks a random woman on the street to serve him lunch then eventually hits the jackpot... He finds an electronics store with a video camera pointing out of the front window at passersby and displaying it on a TV. He is instantly mesmerized by the experience of seeing himself on television. Eventually, he begins walking away but somehow manages to step between a limousine attempting to park and another stationary car, getting squeezed a bit in his knee.
There the plot pivots because somehow, rather than the wealthy woman riding in the limousine realizing her vehicle just hit an older man far out of his element, her interactions with him convince her he is a very reserved but uber-philosophical genius. The woman happens to be married to a man Ben Rand framed by the move as a Warren Buffet type. Someone who seems like's he's been 80 years old all of his life. A multi-billionaire consulted for behind-the-scenes economic advice by everyone, including the President of the United States. And when Ben does offer advice, the President comes to him at his home, if you had any doubt. Chance rides along with the wife back to the Rand mansion and, from that point on, everyone in this rarified strata of the rich and the wise who encounter Chance comes to the same WRONG conclusion. That he's a low-key, understated economic and philosophical genius.
The plot emphasizes Chance's simplistic but insatiable appetite for television through numerous scenes. At several points, someone interacting with him will indirectly reference what he's watching rather than paying attention to them and he simply responds with "I like to watch." That quote was actually used as the tag line for the movie when it was released.
Of course, not everyone is fooled. Due to a spiraling series of unlikely events, Chance is present as the President seeks advice from Ben Rand and Chance is asked to opine on some weighty subject of economic importance. He does, the President winds up quoting this genius and mentioning him by name and suddenly the media is clamoring to know more about him. Of course there is NOTHING to learn about him because he has no footprint and even his name Chance Gardener is a fluke. People around him crossed wires when trying to get his last name after his "old man" died and he answered with his occupation. This of course further amplifies the hype around this unknown sage.
He eventually appears on a television talk show which is seen by the housekeeper Louise who informed Chance of the death of the "old man" and was let go at the same time as Chance. Her character essentially represents everyman (the rest of us) in the plot and she is stunned at the fawning treatment provided to Chance. She's watching the appearance with friends and yells at the TV...
It's for sure it's a white man's world in America. Hell. I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant. I'll say right now he never learned to read or write. No sir. Had no brains a'tall. Stuffed with rice pudding between the ears. Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now. Yessir. All ya gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.
At the same time, all of the elites he's encountered are watching the same appearance and further cementing their prior conclusions... That he's a philosophical visionary.
Being There was produced as a satire. It was acted as a total dead-pan comedy. The dialog in the movie perfectly captures the simplistic euphemisms the rich and powerful use to reference complex issues without having to actually explain the underlying issue even ONCE to confirm they have any clue what they are talking about. Because the entire script is played totally straight, the viewer spends the entire time on the figurative edge of their seat waiting to see who finally sees through the upper crust nonsense and calls out Chance for what he is. A total, blithering idiot.
And while waiting for someone -- ANYONE -- in the movie to have that epiphany, the viewer listens to each scene as weighty topics are "discussed" using these nonsense metaphors about gardening and seasons and harvesting, recognizes the same type of meaningless, bloodless language being used today and desperately wants to see, just once, one of the characters scream BULLSHIT!
Sound familiar? The United States is presently trapped within a Being There parallel universe. The American President has always been mentally deficient but is obviously experiencing compounding problems stemming from dementia. He has zero attention span. He requires himself to be "entertained" by any information presented to him to absorb. His universe of themes for anything he discusses is limited to tariffs, flattery of himself, denigration of anyone else who might be compared to him, grift, "deals", lawsuits, using law enforcement for score settling and purposely destroying anything done by his black, first-term predecessor Barack Obama, out of pure racism, jealousy and spite. And this Iran war may be the cornerstone of Trump's "erase Obama" fixation that dates back to Trump's first term.
As of late March 2026, roughly sixty five percent of Americans disapprove of the Iran war, disapprove of tariffs and disapprove of pretty much anything Trump is currently doing or contemplating. But until we have elections to provide some chance for that sixty five percent to change the balance of power, the existing balance of power is dominated by members of a party who refuse to recognize their leader is a utter, complete idiot. Not a single member of the majority party has called bullshit on a single catastrophic decision made by the President.
In the movie, none of the elites ever have an epiphany about the idiot that rose into a position of extreme influence out of nowhere. No character engaged in or within earshot of any of the solemn, economic discussions relying on nonsense metaphors ever calls bullshit. But Being There was a movie. The failure to learn was part of the satirical bite of the script. Part of that bite came from seeing everyone fail to recognize reality then imagining for themselves how bad things could get without correction.
America in 2026 isn't a satirical movie. America in 2026 has launched another war of choice. It has disturbed oil markets in ways even doomsday middle east policy wonks never imagined ANY actor initiating. It has spiked prices and cut supply in ways that will trigger rampant inflation worldwide, limit the availability of fertilizer due to liquid natural gas shortages for the next five years and has unwound nearly fifty years of global economic practices that benefited US citizens more than any other nation on earth.
The United States is going to "be there" in the new hellish reality it is creating for itself for decades to come. And that reality will only worsen until enough of the rich and powerful have that epiphany that never came in the movie and act on it.
WTH
