It can’t be said that reporters don’t cover extensively cover Donald Trump, but it can be said that their coverage is often poor. Yesterday, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a letter to the dictator of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, about working to resolve a dispute with Ethiopia over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The letter is bizarre if you believe the things that Donald Trump says, as he claimed last year to have already resolved that dispute and counts it as one the supposed wars he has ended. How it could be counted as a war is hard to fathom as there hasn’t been a military conflict, much less a war so far. Incredibly, prominent news outlets covered that letter, but ignored the whole ended a war aspect.
Here is how Donald Trump talked about ending the “war” in July:
And Egypt and Ethiopia, as you know, they’ve been fighting over the damn Ethiopia built a dam with United States money largely it’s one of the largest dams in the world and it has on little problem. It doesn’t allow much water going into the Nile River. So you can imagine Egypt’s not thrilled because they they they live off the Nile River. The Nile River, it’s it’s blood, it’s heart, it’s everything. And, uh, we think we have that one pretty well. taken care of. But that was that was a pretty bad thing. I I was watching this as it was going up. I get pictures and satellites and everything and I’m looking at this massive Dam and I’m saying, is that going to be blocking the water to the Nile? and, anyway, that should have never sort of happened the way it happened. but financed by the United States of America. The whole thing is a little crazy, but we got that solved. I think that’s going to be solved pretty long term.
(The US didn’t fund the dam, contrary to what he said there.)
Despite that, Reuters’ Trevor Hunnicutt wrote a piece titled “Trump offers to mediate Egypt-Ethiopia dispute on Nile River waters.” That makes no mention of Donald Trump claiming to have already resolved this or that he claimed there was a war he stopped.
It’s the same story with NBC News’ Freddie Clayton, who wrote a piece titled “Egypt welcomes Trump’s offer to mediate Nile River water dispute with Ethiopia.”
Over at ABC News, they published a story from the Associated Press’ Samy Magdy titled to “Egypt and Sudan welcome Trump’s offer to mediate Nile River dam dispute.” Again no mention of the whole “war” thing.
We should note that another Associated Press reporter Will Weissert did manage to cover the “war” element:
The president frequently boasts about ending eight wars around the world, though that claim is exaggerated. Egypt and Ethiopia are already on his list of wars he resolved, with Trump maintaining he stopped a conflict that might have led to fighting over issues that included the dam known as GERD.
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