OP-ED: A Day to Make Announcements, a Night to Contradict Oneself — Who Really Runs America?

The Brutal Arithmetic of Contradiction

Let’s lay out the equation without embellishment, because clarity is the only weapon left when chaos becomes a strategy of governance.

Option A: Trump knows there is no deal and he is lying. He is fabricating a diplomatic victory out of thin air to fuel his narrative, knowing that the correction will come later, when media attention has already moved on to something else. This is deliberate manipulation of American and global public opinion.

Option B: Trump sincerely believes there is a deal, and his own vice president is publicly telling him he’s wrong. This means the President of the United States is not informed of the actual status of his own negotiations. This means that someone—an advisor, an intermediary, a sycophant—has told him what he wanted to hear.

Option C: Vance is wrong and Trump is right. But then, why wasn’t the Vice President of the United States briefed on the most important deal of the decade? And why didn’t anyone correct him within hours?

And yet—none of these three options is reassuring. Each one describes a dysfunction that, in any other G7 country, would bring down a government.

The Normalization of the Unacceptable

The most terrifying thing isn’t the contradiction. The most terrifying thing is how quickly we’re getting used to it. One news cycle later, we’ve moved on to something else. The announcement of the blockade erased the announcement of the lifting of the blockade. The lack of an agreement erased the announcement of the agreement. And tomorrow, a new announcement will erase that lack. It’s a political palimpsest where nothing remains, where nothing matters, where nothing is binding.

When the U.S. Word Is No Longer Worth Anything

Imagine you’re the prime minister of an allied country. You have to make a strategic decision—a naval redeployment, a trade agreement, a diplomatic stance on Iran. You call Washington. They tell you one thing. You build your policy around that thing. And twelve hours later, that thing no longer exists.

This is exactly what the United States’ allies are experiencing right now. And the question they’re asking themselves is no longer “What does America want?”—it’s “Does America even know what it wants?”

Capitals across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have developed a diplomatic survival instinct: never react to an American announcement for at least 48 hours. Wait for the contradiction. Wait for the correction. Wait for the next version of reality. This is unprecedented in the history of Western diplomacy—the free world’s main ally has become a source that must be fact-checked before it can be taken seriously.

A Gift to Opponents

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, they’re watching and taking notes. Every contradiction is archived. Every inconsistency is exploited. When the president says “agreement” and the vice president says “nothing,” America’s adversaries don’t wonder who is telling the truth. They understand that no one is in charge. And they act accordingly.

Gaslighting as a Method of Governance

There is a word to describe the act of denying having said what one has said, of rewriting the immediate past, of presenting two contradictory realities as perfectly consistent. That word is gaslighting. And when it is practiced on the scale of a nuclear superpower, it is no longer a matter of psychology—it is a matter of international security.

Because deterrence relies on credibility. Diplomacy relies on one’s word. Treaties rely on consistency. And all of this—deterrence, diplomacy, treaties—has just been reduced to a morning tweet that is contradicted by an evening tweet.

You cannot deter an adversary when you cannot even agree with your own vice president.

Amnesia as a Political Weapon

The perverse genius of this method is that it relies on exhaustion. Each contradiction is so rapid, so total, so unabashed that it paralyzes critical thinking. The human brain can process one contradiction. It can handle five. But when contradictions come at a rate of one per hour, the brain gives up. It normalizes them. It stops being outraged. And that is precisely the goal.

The President, the Vice President, or the Algorithm

The question being asked—who’s telling the truth in this administration?—is actually the wrong question. The right question is: Who makes the decisions? Because if the president announces a deal that the vice president knows nothing about, it means one of two things: either they aren’t talking to each other, or they’re speaking to different audiences.

And yet, the second possibility is perhaps the most chilling. Trump announces victory to his base. Vance clarifies the situation for the markets and foreign partners. Two messages, two audiences, zero consistency—but a communication strategy that has its own internal logic: telling everyone what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, even if the two versions are mutually exclusive.

The Hall of Distorted Mirrors

This administration functions like a hall of distorting mirrors—each surface reflects a different reality, and none corresponds to what is actually at the center of the room. The Secretary of State says one thing. The Pentagon says another. The National Security Council puts out a third version. And the president tweets a fourth, which contradicts the first three.

This is not “healthy disagreement within an administration,” as some complacent commentators try to spin it. It is a structural collapse of the communication chain of command of a nuclear superpower. And the whole world is watching, fascinated and terrified, as one watches an accident in slow motion.

The Bare Chronology of Events

Let’s piece together what we know—not what we’ve been told, not what we’ve been led to believe, but what verifiable facts allow us to establish.

Indirect negotiations with Iran are taking place. They are conducted through intermediaries—Oman, most likely. Discreet channels. Nothing new: every U.S. administration since Carter has had channels with Tehran, whether acknowledged or not. What is new is that a president is announcing a result that does not yet exist, turning a preliminary discussion into a historic victory, and finding himself publicly contradicted by his own second-in-command.

Iran, for its part, has not confirmed any agreement. Iranian spokespeople have oscillated between cautious silence and polite denial. Which, in Iranian diplomatic language, means very clearly: there is nothing to confirm because there is nothing.

Why fabricate a victory over Iran?

The answer is depressingly banal: because Trump needed a victory that week. Not next week. Not when the negotiations would actually bear fruit. That week. To cover up another round of unfavorable news. To change the subject. To feed the media machine that needs a new, spectacular announcement every single day.

And this is where the cynicism reaches its peak: peace with Iran—an issue that affects the lives of millions of people, the stability of an entire region, and the future of Iran’s nuclear program—is reduced to a communication tool. A narrative prop. A theatrical set that is assembled and dismantled according to the needs of the show.

Unblocking, Then Blockade: Absurdity Comes at a Cost

The strait—whether it’s the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes—is not an abstraction. Every announcement concerning it causes prices to fluctuate. Every word the president utters on this subject results in billions being gained or lost on the energy markets.

Announcing the lifting of the blockade is like telling the markets: Relax, the oil will flow. Prices drop. Contracts are signed. Investments are planned on that basis.

Announcing a blockade the next day is like saying: Panic—oil is under threat. Prices skyrocket. Contracts signed yesterday are null and void. Planned investments are put on hold.

And yet—someone, somewhere, made a lot of money between those two announcements. Someone who knew, before the market did, that the second announcement would contradict the first. The question of who that person is—and whether they are in the president’s inner circle—would warrant a congressional investigation in and of itself.

Sailors, captains, insurers

While Washington plays rhetorical ping-pong, real ships are sailing in real waters. Oil tanker captains must decide, in real time, whether to cross the strait or turn back. Marine insurance companies must assess the risk—and their premiums fluctuate with every presidential tweet. Naval officers must interpret orders that change from one briefing to the next.

This isn’t politics. It’s real danger to real lives.

Say, deny, rephrase—the three-step cycle

There is now a recognizable pattern, a mechanism so well-honed it could be patented:

Step 1 — The spectacular announcement. Trump declares something monumental. A historic agreement. A total victory. A strategic breakthrough. The tone is definitive. There are no ifs or buts. No “we’re working toward.” It’s a done deal.

Step 2 — The contradiction. Someone in the administration—Vance, a secretary, a general—publicly says that’s not quite right. Or not right at all. Reality reasserts itself, briefly.

Phase 3 — The re-framing. Pro-Trump media outlets explain that the president never said what he said, or that he meant something else, or that his words were “taken out of context.” And the cycle begins again.

This cycle, repeated dozens of times, has a devastating cumulative effect: it makes accountability impossible, because the official position never exists long enough to be evaluated.

When Words Cease to Mean Anything

The philosopher Hannah Arendt had a term for this. She called it the destruction of factuality—the moment when a political power decides that facts are optional, that reality is negotiable, that truth is whatever the most powerful decide it to be, today, right now, at this very moment.

This is not a new phenomenon in human history. But it is new in the history of a nuclear democracy with 330 million people.

The Man Who Said No to the President on Live TV

JD Vance deserves special attention in this segment. Because what he did—publicly contradicting the president on an international agreement—is, in American history, an act of exceptional gravity.

When George H.W. Bush was Reagan’s vice president, he never contradicted him. When Dick Cheney was steering foreign policy from the shadows, he didn’t contradict—he guided. When Joe Biden was Obama’s vice president, disagreements stayed in the office.

Vance, on the other hand, tells the world that the president is lying or mistaken. And he isn’t fired. He isn’t reprimanded. There is no retraction of the retraction. Which means one of two things: either the chaos is so total that no one is in charge, or Vance has power that the vice president isn’t supposed to have.

The Heir Apparent

And yet—there’s another interpretation, one that’s more strategic, more calculated. Vance isn’t contradicting Trump by accident or out of moral courage. He’s contradicting him because he’s building his own credibility. Every time he corrects the president, he’s sending a message to the elites, the markets, and the allies: when it’s my turn, things will be different. I’ll be the one who tells the truth.

This is post-Trump positioning in real time. And it may be the only consistent thing about this entire administration.

The Trap of Continuous Coverage

Every contradiction generates a cycle of coverage. The media covers the announcement. Then they cover the contradiction. Then they cover the reaction to the contradiction. Then they cover the retraction of the retraction. And while they’re covering all of that, they’re not covering what’s really happening—the decisions that change lives, the policies that are implemented in silence, the concrete consequences of the chaos.

Spectacle devours substance. And that is precisely the point.

The Duty to Name

We must name what is happening. Not with the usual euphemisms—“contradictory messages,” “chaotic communication,” “unconventional style.” These phrases are polite lies that contribute to normalization.

What is happening has specific names: incoherence at the highest levels of government. Presidential disinformation. Dysfunction in the chain of command. And potentially, if the contradiction regarding Iran turns out to be deliberate: the fabrication of a diplomatic fact.

A columnist who refuses to call these things by their proper names is not being cautious—he is complicit in the obfuscation.

When Disagreements at the Top Preceded Catastrophes

History is full of examples where communication chaos at the top preceded disasters. World War I began, in part, because diplomatic signals between major powers were contradictory and indecipherable. The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly spiraled out of control because the communication channels between Washington and Moscow were not synchronized.

The difference is that in 1914 and 1962, the contradictions were unintentional—glitches in the system. In 2025, the contradictions are the system itself.

The Risk of Accidental Escalation

When a president says “blockade” and no one knows if he’s serious, an Iranian naval commander must make a decision in real time. Is this a real blockade? Should we prepare? Should we respond? A poorly positioned ship, a misinterpreted drone, an order based on the wrong tweet—and the situation spirals out of control.

This is the scenario that military strategists call “accidental escalation.” And it has never been more likely than it is today—not because of an adversary’s aggression, but because of an ally’s inconsistency.

The system was designed to withstand a lot—but not this

The Founding Fathers devised an extraordinary system of checks and balances. Three branches of government. Two chambers. A Constitution. An independent judiciary. All of this to prevent a single man from destroying the Republic.

But they didn’t anticipate a president who lies faster than the institutions can correct him. They didn’t anticipate Twitter. They didn’t anticipate an entire party that refuses to exercise its power of oversight. And they didn’t anticipate a vice president who contradicts the president without anyone—anyone—holding him accountable.

The brakes are there. But no one is stepping on the pedal.

Congress’s Silence

Where is Congress in all of this? Where are the hearings? Where are the committees? When the president announces a deal that doesn’t exist and a blockade that contradicts the previous day’s resolution, who summons him, who questions him, who demands answers?

The silence of the Republican-controlled Congress is not caution. It is capitulation. And this capitulation comes at a cost: it turns the world’s leading democracy into a spectator of its own collapse.

Who’s telling the truth? No one—and that’s the problem

The initial question was: Who is telling the truth in this administration?

The answer, upon analysis, is as simple as it is terrifying: the question of truth is no longer relevant, because truth is no longer the goal. The goal is control of the narrative—not a coherent narrative, but the dominant narrative at any given moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s contradicted the very next moment. What matters is that it existed long enough to be believed by those who want to believe it.

Trump didn’t announce a deal because there was a deal. He announced it because he needed to announce a deal. Vance didn’t contradict him because he’s defending the truth. He contradicted him because he needed to distinguish himself. And the strait was neither unblocked nor blocked—it was exploited as a rhetorical prop.

And yet, the strait is real. Iran is real. The ships are real. The missiles are real. And one day—perhaps soon—the reality that this administration refuses to acknowledge will assert itself. Brutally. Irrevocably.

And on that day, it will be too late to ask who was telling the truth.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost