Mediaite67%
‘We Have a Dictator Running This Country’: House Democrat Says Trump Isn’t Sharing U.S. Casualty Figures With Congress 60%
By Michael Luciano54%
7/21/2026, 12:14:47 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 24.8% saturation with 151 hits. Analysis detected 1,326 faulty-reasoning hits from 608 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.5% and a BS Rank of 60% (7,714 of 18,985 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 59.40% of the article peer group.
Rep.
Adam Smith (D-WA) claimed that the Trump administration has not been forthright with Congress regarding the cost of the Iran war in terms of money and soldiers who have been wounded.
The U.S. bombed Iran for the 10th straight day on Monday after Iran strikes on Jordan killed two active-duty U.S.
Army soldiers over the weekend.
Another U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq while disposing of an Iranian drone .
At least 17 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the war began.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that over the past week and a half, Iran carried out three other strikes targeting the U.S. military in the Middle East.
Dozens of soldiers were wounded and several helicopters were hit in the attacks, which the Department of Defense has not acknowledged.
Appearing on Monday’s OutFront on CNN, Smith said members of Congress are not getting transparency about the war, either.
The congressman accused President Donald Trump of being a “dictator” who views the conflict as a personal venture and therefore does not feel obligated to be frank with the public.
His remarks took host Erin Burnett aback:
BURNETT: Do you know the full extent of American injuries and do you know the full extent of equipment losses?
SMITH: We don’t.
We don’t.
Look, we don’t because the Pentagon has not been transparent about that.
I get reports from people who, they know a service member at a base in Jordan or Iraq, or someone saying, “Yeah, we heard there was an attack.
There’s 20 or 30 people wounded.”
Pentagon doesn’t say anything about it.
We dig into it as The New York Times has, and you then find out.
But look, this is, again, no transparency, as you said, no press, no conversation about this.
We have a dictator running this country.
We have never had a situation where we’ve been at war and the president has treated it as his own war, where he doesn’t have to share information with the American people or with Congress.
I mean, this is a frightening situation.
And, yeah, they have not been telling us what’s been happening in terms of lost equipment, in terms of the cost of the war, and certainly in terms of the service members who have been wounded.
BURNETT: Can I just say something that I think is, I guess, is painfully obvious, but I feel like I have to say it, Congressman.
You are the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
It would seem to me definitional that if anybody knew the extent of losses of things like the entire missile defense system for the United States bases and countries that we support in the region, and American troops being injured, that your source wouldn’t be somebody calling who has a friend who serves on a base.
But you’re telling me it is.
SMITH: Yeah.
And we’re digging.
My staff is constantly in contact with as many people as we can at the Pentagon.
You know, they are just not being transparent.
We have to sort of pull it out of them or find it in one place or another.
So look, I mean, the lack of transparency certainly is concerning.
The Iran war has been widely unpopular since Trump launched it in February.
Polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Americans oppose it.
Watch above via CNN.
The post ‘We Have a Dictator Running This Country’: House Democrat Says Trump Isn’t Sharing U.S.
Casualty Figures With Congress first appeared on Mediaite .
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.