When President Donald Trump says “nobody” knew or expected something, that often means lots of people knew or expected it.
Trump made wildly inaccurate “nobody” claims about multiple subjects during his first presidency. Perhaps most famously, he declared in 2017, while trying and failing to pass a replacement for Obamacare, that “nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
He’s now doing it again amid the war with Iran.
On multiple occasions this month, Trump has claimed “nobody” had expected Iran to attack its Persian Gulf neighbors after it was attacked by the US and Israel. “Nobody ever thought they’d be shot at,” he said of Gulf countries on Thursday. “Nobody was even thinking about it,” he said Monday. “Nobody, nobody, no, no, no. No, the greatest experts — nobody thought they were going to hit,” he said last week.
In reality, various experts had not only thought but publicly predicted that Iran would retaliate by striking countries in the region. Iranian officials had themselves said this was their plan.
Like Trump’s health care claim in 2017 and the “nobody” claims he made about the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the new claim about Iran appears to be an attempt to shield himself from criticism. If nobody expected Iranian attacks on Gulf nations, nobody thought the US needed to prepare for another pandemic and nobody knew it would be so tough to pass a health care bill, surely none of these situations could be the president’s fault.
Many of Trump’s other false “...
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