An Old
Fashioned Lie.

You see a headline. It confirms what you already suspected. You share it, argue about it, and deliver a remarkably confident explanation of why the other side is full of shit.

Then comes the missing sentence. Or the longer video. Or the expert who was considerably less certain than the headline suggested.

Now you have two problems: you were wrong, and you were really impressive about it.

A story can mislead without every sentence being false. A fact can be genuine while the conclusion attached to it is doing work the evidence cannot support. Being mistaken, selling an argument, and knowingly lying are different things. We ought to keep them different—even when we dislike the person holding the microphone.

I’m not the most neutral man in America. I have opinions. What I want is a conversation where the inconvenient evidence gets a seat at the table.

What are they selling?

In 1929, Edward Bernays helped turn women smoking in public into a statement about freedom. The Easter parade stunt presented cigarettes as “torches of freedom.” His client was American Tobacco. Independence was the appeal; selling cigarettes was the business.¹

That is the question I want beside every beautifully packaged political story: what am I being asked to believe, and what does the person selling it get if I do?

It gets harder when the story belongs to your team. Imagine giving thirty years to a political cause: donations, friendships, arguments at Thanksgiving, lessons you taught your kids. An unwelcome fact can sound less like “they were wrong” and more like “I was wrong”—or worse, “they used me.”

That doesn’t mean your principles were worthless or the people you helped didn’t matter. It means thirty years of loyalty doesn’t obligate you to donate another ten to a bad argument.

Nor are we doomed to ignore corrections. Research has found that corrections can reduce political misperceptions, including when the correction is inconvenient to someone’s politics. That is more useful than assuming every challenge makes people dig in forever.² Otherwise, welcome to the show: nobody changes their mind, and I’ve prepared seventeen episodes.

The laptop, the letter, and the headline

The name Hunter Biden can make people choose a conclusion before they have heard a claim. So let’s separate the pieces.

In October 2020, fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a letter raising the possibility of Russian involvement in the emerging email story. The letter acknowledged that they lacked evidence of Russian involvement and had not established whether the emails were genuine. Politico’s headline was much firmer: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”³

The qualifications mattered. Their presence further down the story did not turn the headline into an accurate description of what the letter established.

There was also a political objective. In interview excerpts published by the Republican-led House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, former acting CIA director Michael Morell described concern about Russian interference and a desire to help Biden. Asked why he wanted Biden to win, he answered: “Because I wanted him to win the election.”⁴ That documents an electoral motive. It does not establish that every signer knew the suspicion was false.

In her November 2024 account, journalist Catherine Herridge said she brought vetted Hunter Biden records to a senior CBS executive on October 23, 2020. She said her unit received no further laptop assignment before the election, and described the network’s later forensic review in November 2022. She also said she did not know what happened after that initial handoff; CBS had not responded by her deadline.⁵

Here is my judgment: I believe CBS knew it had a genuine story that could hurt Biden and buried it before the election. That is how I read Herridge’s account and the timing. I cannot establish what was said inside those editorial meetings. But protecting Biden is the explanation I think fits. That is my inference, not an independently established finding of intent.

At Hunter Biden’s 2024 gun trial, prosecutors introduced the laptop, and an FBI witness described linking it to him and corroborating communications.⁶ This does not validate every allegation attached to the laptop. Nor does authentic material, by itself, rule out an influence operation.

But “the material is fabricated” and “someone may be using authentic material to influence an election” are different claims. If we keep switching between them, we can protect a conclusion from almost any evidence.

When uncertainty became a mushroom cloud

In October 2002, President George W. Bush framed waiting for definitive proof of Iraq’s nuclear threat as risking a “mushroom cloud.”⁷ It was a powerful argument: uncertainty itself became a reason to act before the worst happened.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2008 majority findings concluded that significant prewar claims were unsupported by, or contradicted, the available intelligence. The report passed 10–5 with bipartisan support. Vice Chairman Kit Bond disputed the process and conclusions, arguing that officials had relied on flawed intelligence and calling the report political theater.⁸⁹

Those disagreements belong in the record. So does the fact that skeptical reporting existed before the invasion. Knight Ridder reporters questioned the administration’s case while the decision was still being made.¹⁰ Doubt wasn’t invented afterward.

My judgment is that the administration deliberately oversold the threat because it wanted a war in Iraq and needed the public behind it. Why it wanted that war, and how motives differed inside the administration, I cannot settle here. The documented gap between evidence and rhetoric supports criticism; my conclusion about intent goes further.

The stakes were enormous. A 2023 Brown University Costs of War estimate put the combined cost of the Iraq and Syria wars at nearly $2.9 trillion, including projected veterans’ care through 2050.¹¹ That is a scoped estimate of past and future costs—not money already spent solely on Iraq, and not a measure of anyone’s profit.

The public needed the uncertainty while there was still a decision to make.

The test has to include my side

I am an American Jew. I support Israel, and I support the U.S.–Israeli campaign against Iran. Those are my positions. They are not evidence for every claim made in support of that campaign.

That is where this exercise has to get uncomfortable.

In a February 2026 interview, Steve Witkoff described Iran as “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”¹² That is a claim about material, not a completed weapon. It is also a dated statement, not a countdown that can simply be repeated months later.

I hear echoes of the urgency used before Iraq. An echo is not proof that the threat is false. It is a reason to ask more precise questions.

In its September 7 statement, the IAEA described serious gaps in access and information that prevented it from carrying out required verification work in Iran.¹³ Those gaps are a serious proliferation concern. They are neither a clean bill of health nor a verified timetable for a finished bomb.

The public evidence reviewed for this article does not establish that timetable. I have not reviewed all classified intelligence, and I am not claiming to have disproved a threat. I am saying my support cannot do the work of evidence.

I want a clear, achievable objective and an end. What are we spending money and lives to accomplish? What would count as success? Supporting a military decision does not require accepting a sales pitch whose objective can change for years.

If I demand those answers from people I oppose, I have to demand them from people I support.

Leave room to be wrong

The title of this article is not proof that every person discussed knowingly lied. We have a documented electoral motive, disputes over evidence, and my judgments about CBS and Iraq. Those are different kinds of claims. You should be able to see which is which.

You shouldn’t need a second job to work out whether a headline deserves your confidence. That is why the sources are here, including the dissent and the limits of what they establish. If a fact changes, the article should say what changed—and whether it changes the conclusion.

So the next time a headline settles everything for you, give it a minute.

Read the sentence after the one everybody’s quoting.