We told you the dog was photoshopped

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

When Donald Trump tweeted a photo this afternoon of himself putting a medal around the neck of the hero dog who was injured in the Baghdadi raid, we were heartened for a few seconds… until we realized it was a fake. Palmer Report published proof that the image had been photoshopped, complete with the original photo of the dog that had been rather clumsily edited into an award ceremony photo.

The whole thing was so absurd, even by Donald Trump’s standards, that even some of our own readers were initially hesitant to believe that he’d done such a thing. But now the mainstream media is reporting the same thing. They’ve even tracked down the original photo of Trump putting a medal around the neck of a human, who had been replaced by the dog.

The Washington Post has determined that the hero dog’s face was pasted over that of James McCloughan, a Vietnam War hero who saved the lives of ten of his fellow soldiers, and later went on to become a high school teacher. Steve Herman from Voice of America managed to get the White House to admit that the image was indeed photoshopped.

So does any of this matter? As much as the hero dog deserves recognition, this cheap fake photoshop certainly seems disrespectful to James McCloughan. For that matter it also feels disrespectful to the dog. This is far from the most important Donald Trump scandal of the day, but it is an embarrassing reminder that Trump is simply unfit for office.