The Most Dangerous Fake News Isn’t What They Say — It’s What They Leave Out

This is, unfortunately, another textbook example of disingenuous reporting.

One of the biggest media stories to break over the last few days is a Vanity Fair article that reads less like journalism and more like a deliberate hit piece on Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff.

And let’s be clear about who she is.

Susie Wiles isn’t just another staffer. She’s one of the central reasons this Trump administration looks nothing like the first one. Fewer leaks. Fewer staffing disasters. A disciplined operation. A team that actually functions.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

And it certainly doesn’t happen without leadership.

So what did Vanity Fair do?

They published an article framed around selectively chosen quotes, stripped of context, designed to imply chaos, instability, and extremism.

The piece includes claims attributed to Wiles suggesting Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” that JD Vance’s political shift was purely opportunistic, and that the vice president has been a conspiracy theorist for years.

These quotes weren’t presented with surrounding context. They weren’t balanced with counterpoints. And they weren’t paired with the many positive assessments people inside the administration offered.

That omission wasn’t accidental.

This article didn’t appear in a vacuum.

Just a week earlier, The New York Times ran what many people—including myself—recognized as an outright hit piece on David Sacks. That article collapsed almost immediately once people familiar with the facts pushed back publicly.

This is a pattern.

When someone becomes influential in Trump’s orbit—especially someone who makes the operation more effective—the mainstream media doesn’t critique policy. It attacks character.

Susie Wiles responded directly.

She called the Vanity Fair piece a disingenuously framed hit job, saying significant context was ignored, favorable comments were left out, and the story was clearly designed to paint a narrative of chaos that doesn’t reflect reality.

She stated plainly that the administration has accomplished more in under a year than many presidents do in two terms—and that the results are due to leadership, structure, and vision.

Whether you agree with her politics or not, that response matters.

Because it exposes the game.

Now, some people will reasonably ask:
Why talk to these outlets at all?

That’s a fair question.

Most of us who’ve dealt with legacy media know exactly how this works. Reporters reach out claiming neutrality. They quote selectively. They edit strategically. They omit inconvenient facts.

I’ve personally experienced reporters contacting people I haven’t spoken to in over a decade, digging through high school acquaintances, trying to construct a narrative rather than discover the truth.

This machine doesn’t investigate.
It launders narratives.

That’s why Caroline Leavitt’s response was so important.

She called out what might be the most dangerous form of fake news—not fabrication, not anonymous sources, not misleading headlines—but omission.

Because omission is harder to detect.

The facts aren’t false.
They’re just incomplete.

Positive statements get cut.
Context gets removed.
Contradictory evidence disappears.

And suddenly, a functioning administration is reframed as chaotic—not because it is, but because chaos is the story the outlet wants to sell.

This is something I wrote about years ago.

Most people think fake news means a story that’s entirely made up. But the most effective propaganda doesn’t invent reality—it edits it.

It tells you just enough truth to sound credible, while quietly removing anything that challenges the narrative.

That’s what happened here.

Vanity Fair didn’t lie outright.
They curated.

And curation, when driven by ideology instead of truth, is just deception with better grammar.

If Susie Wiles is guilty of anything, it’s believing—like many have before—that fair treatment was possible.

History says otherwise.

The modern media ecosystem doesn’t reward accuracy.
It rewards alignment.

And when facts get in the way of the storyline, facts are what get cut.

That’s not journalism.

That’s narrative management.

And once you learn to spot omission, you start seeing it everywhere.