A Masterclass in Image versus Reality

The genius of Heather Cox Richardson

Since the inauguration, my Facebook feed has become a wailing wall of anti-Trump passion, with Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack being repeatedly recommended as the go-to source for useful information—“a must read.” Since I found I did not share the alarm and outrage being regularly articulated by those endorsing her, I figured the best way to understand their perspective was to read what they read. So I subscribed. And then I felt a pang of alarm.

In her Substack bio, Heather (can I call her that?) says this about herself and views:

It’s striking to me that in such a brief statement about herself she mentions her interest in “the contrast between image and reality.” Because reading her blog over the past few weeks, I’ve found she provides a masterclass in exactly that: creating an image in contrast to reality.

To be clear, Ms. Richardson is a natural storyteller, very talented in pulling together facts from our past and factoids from our present to offer her readers a compelling view of our current moment. The problem I notice is that she pulls her narrative so tightly through the aperture of her Left Progressive lens, with just enough shards of true information flecked among her opinions-stated-as-fact, that she sounds like she’s offering a clear picture of the political landscape rather than a kaleidoscope of artful outrage. She is an expert in the well-crafted, calmly articulated tirade. I suspect her matter-of-fact tone is what lends her words authority.

What I find most noticeable—and concerning—about her style, though, is how casually she imputes corrupt motives to everyone she criticizes, braiding strands of information together into damning innuendo, reliably putting the worst possible interpretation of intent on the cherry-picked actions and statements of whomever she is fixed upon. While she does scatter into her jeremiads moderating words like “appears” and “seems,” they fall too few and far between to alleviate the deadweight of her conviction.

Additionally, for all that she is a professor of history, Ms. Richardson’s rehashing of the news of the day shows a surprising dearth of scholarly curiosity, a startling lack of nuance or any effort at objectivity regarding the seismic political realignment that is convulsing our parties and our nation. I see in her words no attempt to understand the conflicting forces at play or to grant the possibility of legitimate concerns on multiple sides. Her mission, from what I have gleaned, is to tell a story of heroes and villains coded blue and red, battling it out for the future of humanity. Or something like that. Whatever the case, her narrative often throbs with the vibe of a mythology epic—with the emphasis on myth.

For example, her explanation of Trump’s tariffs from her Wednesday, April 2nd letter carry her signature censure and narrow take:

Trump claims he is imposing “reciprocal tariffs” and says they are about half of what other countries levy on U.S. goods. In fact, the numbers he is using for his claim that other countries are imposing high tariffs on U.S. goods are bonkers. Economist Paul Krugman points out that the European Union places tariffs of less than 3% on average on U.S. goods, while Trump maintained its tariffs are 39%.

Krugman said he had no idea where that number had come from, but financial journalist James Surowiecki figured out that the White House “just took our trade deficit with [each] country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.” He called it “extraordinary nonsense.” Washington Post economic writer Catherine Rampell posted that she was reluctant to amplify Surowiecki’s theory that the tariff rates were based on such a “dumb calculation,” but then the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed it.

And from her April 3rd letter, we see insinuation added into the aspersions:

Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion I dismissed as outlandish when I saw it last night but that economist Paul Krugman today identified as a likely possibility. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said: “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along....”

Let’s pause here to note Ms. Richardson’s clearly crafted image of Trump: imbecilic, frivolous, shallow, venal, inept. Now contrast that with how economist Oren Cass explains the tariffs in an interview with Michael Shellenberger for Public news site:

Another piece of misunderstanding Cass [says] was on the idea of reciprocal tariffs. “There was certainly a communication challenge in calling them reciprocal tariffs,” said Cass, “which people understand to mean ‘Whatever they do to us, we do to them.’ We're sort of holding up a mirror. But there was plenty of messaging for a couple of months leading up to this that what they meant by reciprocal was more like proportional, that it was going to be in relation to the size of the imbalance that we have with the other countries. I wrote¹ a long thing in February walking through what they seem to mean and how it might look.”

People are playing dumb, in other words. “They did a like, ‘We just can't figure this out. This must be some crazy mistake.’ It’s people who, politely, are not trying very hard to figure it out and are well-served by claiming it can't be figured out when, in, when in fact it can.”

Oren Cass understands and advocates the use of tariffs as an economic policy (regardless of Heather Cox Richardson’s proclamation that they are not), and he’s able to provide a clear analysis of their risks and benefits. Anyone reading Ms. Richardson might think Trump is pulling tariffs out of his rump, yet Mr. Cass allows for a more honest take: acknowledgment that there have been problems with messaging around the term “reciprocal,” and also notice that there has been plenty of opportunity for curious economists to learn and understand how Trump intends to use tariffs. Personally, I have far more faith in the sobriety and even-handedness of Mr. Cass’s information than in the tendentious sensationalism of Ms. Richardson and her sources.

As fun as it might be, it would take me far more hours than I have to go through even one of Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” to point out, line by line, its weakness as a tool of sense making. So I’ll just recommend you all take a few moments to read the “letter” below, as it is a prime example of her basic delivery. And while you do, take note of her factual reporting tone; note that she makes claim upon claim upon claim upon claim, providing little or no context—very often simply repeating the claims of other journalists with no corroboration of details, or in many cases, even reporting of them. Indeed, Ms. Richardson’s genius is that she is writing as though a letter to a friend, which of course is not something anyone would fact-check. So she can get away with a lot in this format—speculation and suggestion, opinion and implications, hyperbole and aspersions—it’s all fair game. Within bounds.

Except it seems some of her readers take her writing as a record of reality. How many, I wonder? And what detrimental consequences can come from repeated exposure to this virtual firehose of personally filtered “news”? What happens when sincerely concerned people take it to heart? Perhaps we’ll find out. I hope we won’t. For now, though, read on and learn what a masterclass in low-key propaganda looks like.

February 27, 2025

P.S. For the record: it turns out the Texas child mentioned in her story did not die of measles, she died of medical error. You can learn about it here: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/media-manipulation-of-measles-death--america-needs-the-idaho-medical-freedom-act/

1. Here’s the link: https://americancompass.org/trumps-tariff-whiplash/