The Brilliant Idiocy of Donald J. Trump
It's not intentional, but Donald Trump's habit of saying strange and inexplicable things is becoming a real asset for the US military's propagandists.
When Donald Trump said he was sending a “great hospital boat” to Greenland to “take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” many people laughed out loud.
Here’s a typical social media post:
“Our imbecile of a commander-in-chief doesn’t know the difference between a boat and a ship, plus he’s unaware that both USNS Comfort and Mercy are drydocked in Alabama..”
And a typical headline:
“Trump’s talk of sending a hospital ship to Greenland puzzles leaders. Greenland doesn’t want the help, and the U.S. doesn’t appear to have any hospital ships available to send.”
Much attention was drawn to the fact that Trump’s words were accompanied by a picture of a particular hospital ship, the USNS Mercy, and the fact that it is not ready to sail, but in dry dock undergoing maintenance, and the irony of sending medical help to people who already have excellent free healthcare. These points were not only made by the general public, but also by experts on things like foreign affairs and national security.
And all of them missed the point.
We cannot decode Trump’s strange story without a little history.
In 1980, the US Army’s 7th Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Group developed a new strategy for psychological operations— the US Army’s euphemism for propaganda-which they called Mind War. Where much of the purpose of conventional psychological operations had been to influence the enemy, much of the purpose of MindWar was to influence US citizens to support US military action. This seemed especially urgent in the aftermath of Vietnam, a war which the military believed it had lost “not because we were outfought but because we were out-PSYOPed.”
MindWar’s first big test came in 1991, with the first Gulf War, and it won decisively. The majority of the US population—as well as the majority of the populations in most of the countries in the US-led coalition that fought the war—enthusiastically supported the war. The US has fought mind wars ever since.
So what do we see if we look at Trump’s post through the lens of MindWar?
The first thing to notice is that Trump almost certainly did not write this post. It has none of the hallmarks of his social media writing style. For example, it does not use his idiosyncratic form of capitalization; the phrase “not being taken care of there” is a very soft sell by his standards—he favors hyperbole like tragedy, death, or horror; and the image appears to have been AI generated for this post specifically, which would require prompting an image generator, which is not something Trump is known for—he tends to repost AI images, not create his own. It may therefore have been created by someone skilled in the US military’s art of MindWar—especially as it is no secret that Trump wants to invade Greenland.
Next, there are the two claims. A “hospital boat” is being sent to Greenland, and the people there need medical help. If this post was created by a military propagandist, those two claims each have an obvious and significant function.
Claim 1: “We are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland … It’s on the way!!”
A lot has been made of the image of the USNS Mercy, but Trump’s post does not say he is sending the Mercy, or even a Hospital Ship. It says “hospital boat.” This is very significant. Hospital Ship is a formal designation under the Geneva Convention.
Hospital ships like the Mercy are unarmed. They fly the Red Cross or Red Crescent flag. Under the Geneva Convention, attacking a ship like the Mercy is a war crime.
But there is another kind of “hospital boat” in the US fleet, one with six operating rooms, fourteen ICU beds, forty-six hospital beds expandable to 600 for mass casualty operations, a trauma center, a pharmacy, a laboratory, and dental facilities—a significant hospital by any civilian standard. This is not a Hospital Ship though; it is a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, and is also equipped with a fully embarked Marine battalion; AV-8B Harrier or F-35B fighter jets; MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft; AH-1Z attack helicopters; Landing Craft Air Cushion hovercraft; and enough firepower to seize a small country. The Wasp-class assault ship is the centerpiece of what US military doctrine calls an Amphibious Ready Group or ARG—a group of three or more ships that are prerequisite for a land invasion. General Eric Smith, 39th Commandant, US Marine Corps, emphasized this in the military publication Defense One just a few months ago.
If the US decides to invade Greenland, it needs to position a Wasp-class ship (which, due to its medical facilities could feasibly be called a “hospital boat”) off the Greenlandic coast, which means it needs to sail a ship in that direction, which cannot be done in secret. There are a couple of obvious candidates for this maneuver: the entire Iwo Jima ARG, which is currently in the Caribbean with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked—approximately 4,500 sailors and Marines combined— and the USS Kearsarge, which returned to its homeport at Norfolk, VA a little over a week ago. The US could send the Iwo Jima ARG in the general direction of Greenland under the umbrella of “normal operations,” but turning the Kearsarge around so quickly would need some kind of explanation. “To take care of the many people who are sick,” is probably that explanation. If the Kearsarge sails soon, it will be under the pretense of being the “hospital boat” Donald Trump said was going to help the “sick” Greenlanders.
Claim 2: “To take care of the many people who are sick.”
Where the first claim is a smokescreen to hide a potential invasion from the US public—the Danish-led military coalition assembling to defend Greenland will not, of course, be fooled for a moment—the second claim is new and potentially more interesting. Donald Trump’s previous rhetoric on Greenland has been simple and direct: “we need it for our defense.” This is not a claim anyone skilled in MindWar would make to justify a US war of aggression and choice to the US population.
Domestic justifications for invasions must always be for salvation, or liberation, or something similarly righteous. Russia learned this by applying the US MindWar doctrine to its second invasion of Chechnya. The first invasion, in 1994, failed due to a lack of domestic support in Russia. But by 2000, Russia had developed its own imitation of MindWar, which it called informatsionnoye protivoborstvo, or “information confrontation.” When Russia invaded Chechnya a second time, there was a new justification: the Chechens were dangerous terrorists. The Russian people supported the war, and Russia won. Today, Russia is invading Ukraine under the information confrontation pretense that Ukrainians are Nazis. For now, accusing Greenlanders of being terrorists is pretty much impossible (although that may change if they start defending themselves during or after a US invasion.) But dividing them from Denmark by telling a story that Denmark is exploiting or neglecting them—again, for US public consumption only—provides a moral justification for invading. The US has used this strategy before: by claiming to be “liberating” the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, or, more recently, the Venezuelan people from President Nicolás Maduro.
The brilliance of this MindWar post “by” Trump—if that is, in fact, what it is—is that it exploits Trump’s widely perceived buffoonery, hyperbole, and eccentricity to hide something truly ominous in plain sight. The US may have just announced that it is sending warships to Greenland, and that it will invade under the pretense of “helping the Greenlanders,” and almost no one has noticed.
PS If you found this interesting, you may also appreciate this post from The Drey Dossier explaining that “Trump is not building a ballroom,” but a vast, hardened underground AI data center with a ballroom on top. It may have seemed speculative to some when it was first published (despite all the detailed evidence it included), but it has been pretty much corroborated now. And if you are interested in details about the potential Greenland invasion, I highly recommend following former Danish intelligence officer Jacob Kaarsbo.
Fascinating truth here, too. Thank you for cutting through all of the noise...
Make America Dictatorship Again
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