How Gullible Do They Think We Are?

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, January 06, 2026

 

It looks like Donald Trump has tried to pull another one over on the American people. Fortunately, the president’s critics are just too smart to fall for his elaborate attempts at misdirection.

 

The ambitious and impressive raid inside Caracas that brought the criminal head of the Venezuelan regime to American justice is just one of Trump’s many ruses, the president’s critics contend. It is, in their estimation, an effort to distract voters from a variety of ongoing disasters. Which disasters? That depends on whom you’re talking to and what their various competing obsessions happen to be.

 

“It’s hard to believe a president would time an illegal military attack to distract the public’s attention,” wrote onetime U.S. attorney and legal commentator Barbara McQuade. Of course, it wasn’t at all hard for her to believe such a thing. After all, it just so happened that Operation Absolute Resolve just happened to coincide with the statutory deadline for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” she smirked.

 

The notion that Trump is so terrified by the release of Epstein-related documents is such a common refrain that it found its way into late-night comedy monologues — yes, plural. Many of Trump’s Democratic opponents could not rule out the possibility that the so-called “Epstein files” inspired this action, but neither could they disregard the possibility that their own political hobbyhorses were on the president’s mind when he executed the raid on Caracas.

 

Trump’s “attack” on Venezuela was designed to “distract from the Epstein files,” New York City Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán insisted, but also “the Trump administration’s assault on democracy.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed. Trump needs to “distract from Epstein” and “skyrocketing healthcare costs,” she wrote.

 

It’s quite a coincidence that the topics about which Trump is most concerned just happen to align with the subject headlines that generate the most returns in Democratic fundraising solicitations.

 

But these are activist progressives. More sober, establishmentarian Democrats have rejected that conspiratorial interpretation of events. Rather, they contend, what Trump is really trying to distract you from is the state of the economy.

 

Trump is interested in “looking tough abroad so as to distract from what’s happening to Americans’ pocketbooks,” Senator Elissa Slotkin averred. Onetime Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promulgated a similar line. “It’s an old and obvious pattern,” he wrote. “An unpopular president — failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home — decides to launch a war for regime change abroad.”

 

Those Democrats possessed of a cloying need for self-affirmation from the progressive activist class cleverly avoided narrowing down the subjects from which Trump wants you to look away. Take Senator Chris Murphy. The Connecticut lawmaker, who pivoted within 24 hours of the raid from criticizing Trump for executing a “regime change” operation to complaining that the president “let Maduro’s corrupt thugs stay in charge,” opted for ambiguity when accusing Trump of diverting the public’s attention. “This is war mongering distraction,” he declared simply.

 

They must think you cannot hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. Is there a single American who suddenly forgot about their financial conditions amid a jingoist spasm of national pride in the wake of the Caracas raid? Did the voters who prioritize health care and the rule of law suddenly abandon those preferences? Are we to assume that those who were fixated on the imagined bombshells supposedly lurking in the FBI’s Epstein portfolio are not as preoccupied with that conspiracy today as they were before January 3?

 

The reflexive attribution of Trump’s military operation to an attempt at misdirection may be common, but that doesn’t make it any less condescending. It’s also profoundly stupid. The president has made no secret of his desire to see the Maduro regime, if not dissolved, at least decapitated. His administration has made the case in court filings, in public statements, and in the form of a military campaign targeting drug couriers in the Caribbean, as well as partial air and sea blockades around Venezuela. It’s been hard to miss. Do Democrats assume that you overlooked all that because you were myopically focused on pocketbook issues — but only until this weekend, when you were bamboozled by a display of American military prowess?

 

To make that argument is to render a contemptuous verdict on the American public’s capacity for rational, self-interested thought. It’s possible that these Democrats don’t really believe you’re that gullible. Perhaps they’re engaged in their own effort to redirect your attention away from current events and back to their own priorities. Or maybe, just maybe, they really think you’re that easily manipulated.