Tulsi Gabbard, Bashar Al-Assad and me: Trump’s DNI pick and I, both in Damascus in the winter of 2017 to meet with the dictator of Syria, came away with very different takes (Michael Isikoff, December 17, 2024, Asia Times)
“Whether, if the FBI says something, it’s not some — something it’s not evidence for anyone, especially for us … It’s just propaganda. It’s just fake news.”
And with that, Assad gave me my lead. The dictator of Syria was using a phrase —“fake news” — that had been coined on the 2016 campaign trail by the now-US president. It was a new and lethal American export, a gift to authoritarians around the world looking for a way to dismiss and ridicule inconvenient truths.
And Assad, no doubt emboldened by the PR boost he had just gotten from his new friend, the congresswoman from Hawaii, was happy to join the chorus.