The Washington Post has the latest damning scoop on just how poorly President Donald Trump has governed the country during the coronavirus pandemic: “U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.”

Now, if you don’t take everything reported by socialist billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post — especially about Trump — with a truckload of salt, then you may need to reevaluate your media consumption.

That said, Trump has not always handled the crisis as well as Americans would hope for from a president. In fact, his disastrous press briefings run the risk of making him the poster child for COVID misery. So it’s entirely possible that Trump, who is reportedly not the biggest fan of reading and is definitely not the biggest fan of intelligence agencies, missed some pretty important information. And we have no doubt that Nancy Pelosi’s crack team of House inquisitors will find the Post’s contribution quite helpful as campaign fodder this fall.

But hold the phone. “This isn’t true,” Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell told The Washington Post via social media. “And we told you this before you wrote. And you put the DNI denial of your premise in paragraph 9.”

Grenell’s denial calls to mind the Pentagon’s rare rebuke of an ABC News report three weeks ago. Distorted reports or outright fake news are increasingly eliciting correction by U.S. military and intelligence officials. And such distortions leave the public wondering what is the truth.

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