LAMENTABLE OR LUDICROUS—OR BOTH? PART 2

YESTERDAY, FRANK BRUNI GOT US THINKING about the Trump administration’s lack of professionalism. Today in Part 2, let’s consider Donald “The Golf Cap” Trump himself.

Protocol Honoring the Fallen. There’s our president (also, alas, our narcissistic national buffoon) at a military ceremony honoring U.S. service members killed in his free-wheeling war with Iran. What’s more, there’s the “inadvertent” help of Fox News as well. 

Robert Mackey recounts in The Guardian, March 8, 2026, “Fox News used old video of Donald Trump in multiple reports on Saturday and Sunday, concealing from viewers that the commander-in-chief wore a golf hat throughout a ceremony on Saturday in which he saluted six flag-draped transfer cases carrying the remains of the first US troops to die in his war on Iran.”

Image by Julia Memaree Nikhinson/AP from The Guardian. 

“The president,” Mackey continues, “had stirred outrage online by failing to remove his Trump-brand white hat during the ritual homecoming at Dover air force base in Delaware on Saturday for six army reserve soldiers killed in Kuwait.”

This far, then, Trumb was a narcissistic doofus. But the actions of Fox News make him all the more lamentable: MacKey relates, “On Saturday afternoon,” Mackey notes, “Fox News did initially broadcast the correct video of Trump at the ceremony, showing that he wore a hat as he saluted alongside first lady Melania Trump, JD Vance, second lady Usha Vance, and other officials. Less than an hour later, however, when a Fox News host described the president’s visit to the base for the ‘dignified transfer earlier today,’ viewers were shown old video of Trump at a similar ceremony in December, when he had not worn a hat to salute troops who had died in Syria.”

The Ensuing Brouhaha. Tom Jones reports in Poynter.50, March 9, 2026, “Fox News Aired Old Footage of Trump Honoring Fallen Troops. Was It an Honest Mistake or a Deliberate Choice?”

Spoiler: “When it comes to coverage of Trump,” Jones observes, “it’s hard to give Fox News the benefit of the doubt.” 

“Some,” Jones recounts, “were upset that Trump never removed his white ‘USA’ baseball cap [see Trump merch: $55]. Not removing one’s hat, unless you’re in military attire, could be considered disrespectful.”

Jones cited journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo who tweeted, “If any other network did this it would be a huge scandal, Fox would lead the chorus of criticisms and faux-outrage, and people would lose their jobs. But not at Fox. It’s not a news network. It’s a state propaganda channel.”

Jones also quoted Bill Carter, a former longtime chief TV correspondent for The New York Times, who tweeted, “No ‘news’ org would ever make this ‘mistake.’ This was clearly a deliberate choice to try to protect Trump from criticism they knew would rain down on him. Only serves as latest, and one of clearest, examples of Fox being in the full-on PROPAGANDA business, not the news business.”

Jones concludes by quoting Jack Tapper, co-host of a Sunday public affairs program:  “Let’s be clear: It is the news media’s responsibility to cover this war, not to cheerlead for it…. We’re not going to stop. It doesn’t matter how many times the propaganda campaign that accompanies any war is deployed against us. So, get used to it.”

Hear! Hear! Let us not settle for the lamentable and the ludicrous. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026