USA Today
Vice President JD Vance just pulled off a very 2025 trick: warning about fake news by making some up.
Following a few days of bizarre and baseless rumors — primarily from far left social media trolls and influencers — about President Donald Trump’s health, Vance logged onto X and wrote:
“If the media you consumed told you that Donald Trump was on his death bed because he didn’t do a press conference for 3 days, imagine what else they’re lying to you about.”
It’s a neat line. Punchy. Timely. But also false. No credible outlet — not The New York Times, not CNN, not Fox, not even the most fringe clickbait — reported Trump was on his death bed. The story existed only in rumor mills and the viral, self-feeding algorithms of social media, mainly on the cesspool that X has become since one-time Trump ally Elon Musk killed any moderation in the name of “free speech.”
In fact, these rumors spread like spilled ink on X until mainstream reporters eventually swatted it down with solid
And yet Vance cast it as fact. In warning against misinformation, he became a conduit for it. He conjured a lie to illustrate the dangers of lies. Meta-misinformation.
This is the world we live in now. Facts are optional. Narratives are king. A shadow on X can feel like breaking news. Politicians seize the whisper, recast it, and send it back into circulation. Corrections rarely catch up. The phantom becomes a cudgel. The echo becomes the story.
There’s theater here, too. Trump’s allies present themselves as guardians of truth in a hall of mirrors. But often, they manufacture the distortions they claim to fight. Meanwhile, critics of Trump pick at observable gaffes. One side shadows ghosts; the other shadows reality.
David Carr once called the media ecosystem “an argument without end.” Vance’s post is proof. The rumor never existed until he amplified it. A whisper becomes a drumbeat. In the digital age, perception moves faster than fact. And sometimes, even those claiming to defend truth are its most prolific forgers.
Welcome to modern politics. A world where cautionary tales are often cautionary only because someone made them real.