The White House published its official summary of the 2026 State of the Union address on February 25th.

To no one’s surprise it reads like North Korea. It is a silly propaganda operation, like a full buffet of military-grade influence techniques.

As a historian of this stuff I assure you that every line in the document maps to a known information warfare tactic. Most of them are catalogued in military doctrine manuals from RAND, NATO StratCom, and the old Soviet active measures playbook.

None of this is subtle.

None of it is new.

The only thing novel is that the .gov domain has been captured by people who type like they only have thumbs.

Here is the secret decoder ring you should be able to find in any box of Cheerios.

Loyalty Enumeration

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
1. The entire “Democrats refused to applaud” list structure	Documenting who failed to perform sufficient enthusiasm for the leader transforms a press release into a denunciation register. The content of the speech becomes secondary to cataloguing the reactions of potential enemies.	Stalin’s Pravda tracked applause levels at Party Congresses. Mao’s Hundred Flowers campaign invited criticism, then used responses as a purge list. Ceausescu’s final speech was structured identically.

Dehumanization Lexicon

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
2. “Savage criminal illegal aliens — killers, rapists, gang members, and traffickers,” “illegal alien monster,” “invasion”	Categorical dehumanization collapses an entire population into threat archetypes. Once a group is linguistically recategorized as subhuman, any action against them reads as self-defense rather than aggression.	Nazi Ungeziefer (vermin) and Untermenschen. Rwandan Hutu Power radio used inyenzi (cockroaches). Ottoman authorities framed Armenians as existential threats. Khmer Rouge called targets “parasites.”

Firehose of Falsehood

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
3. Over 47 claims in a single document: “ending eight wars,” “total victory over terrorists,” “single largest drop in the murder rate in 125 years,” soaring 401(k)s, secure border, falling crime	Volume overwhelms verification. Each claim would require independent fact-checking, but the sheer density ensures no single lie gets adequate scrutiny. Documented by RAND as a core Russian information warfare technique. The goal is not persuasion but exhaustion.	Russian IRA operations 2014-2020. Goebbels’ principle of the Big Lie scaled through repetition. Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob” during the 2003 invasion. Erdogan’s post-coup media blitz in 2016.

Atrocity Propaganda

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
4. “The grieving families of innocent American women and children murdered by criminal illegal aliens — including the mother of Iryna Zarutska”	Showcase individual victims of the target group to generalize criminality across an entire population. The named victim creates emotional specificity; the category does the political work. Individual tragedy becomes collective indictment.	The Nazis published Der Stürmer with a regular feature on crimes allegedly committed by Jews. The British WWI Bryce Report fabricated Belgian atrocity stories. Willie Horton was the American domestic version.

Blood Libel / Ethnic Financial Crime

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
5. “Ending widespread fraud schemes — like the $19 billion Somali fraud scandal that burdened Minnesota taxpayers”	Attach an outrageous financial crime to a specific ethnic community as a collective. Position the native population as victims. The dollar figure gives false precision. Whether a kernel of fraud exists is irrelevant — the function is to weld an ethnic identity to criminality in public memory.	Medieval blood libel against Jews. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Chinese Exclusion Act propaganda about wage theft. Japanese internment justified partly through claims of economic sabotage.

Child Protection Pretext

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
6. “Protecting minor children from the horrors of irreversible sex changes”	Position the state as rescuer of children from a demonized minority. “Protect the children” is the single most reliable authoritarian mobilization frame because it makes opposition impossible to articulate without appearing to endorse harm to minors.	Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” (1977). UK Section 28 (1988). Putin’s “gay propaganda” law (2013). QAnon’s child trafficking mythology. Nazi campaign against “degenerate” influences on youth.

War Buried in Consumer Metrics

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
7. Military invasion of Venezuela listed between gas prices and tax cuts	Normalization through sequencing. Embedding an act of war inside a consumer satisfaction list makes conquest read as just another deliverable. By the time the reader scrolls past “No Tax on Tips,” the overthrow of a sovereign government is just another bullet point.	Mussolini buried the invasion of Ethiopia inside domestic economic messaging. Bush administration embedded Iraq escalation inside State of the Union laundry lists. Israel’s settlement expansion reported alongside economic indicators.

Sovereignty Laundering

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
8. “The decisive military action that brought indicted narcoterrorist Nicolás Maduro to justice, crippling drug cartels and liberating our hemisphere”	Reframe military invasion of a sovereign nation as law enforcement. “Indicted” provides the legal costume. “Narcoterrorist” merges drug policy with war on terror framing. “Liberating our hemisphere” recycles Monroe Doctrine language to present aggression as regional stewardship.	Panama 1989 (Noriega). Grenada 1983. Iraq 2003 framed as “liberation.” Soviet “fraternal assistance” for Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979.

Credit Claiming / Post Hoc Fallacy

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
9. “Inflation finally subsiding,” gas prices dropping, stock market surging, crime falling	Claim credit for trends that precede your administration or result from factors beyond executive control. Economic indicators move on multi-year cycles; presenting inherited momentum as personal achievement is a universal autocratic move.	Mussolini and the trains. Stalin and industrialization (achieved through mass death). Putin claiming credit for oil-price-driven GDP growth in the 2000s. Xi claiming poverty reduction that was already trending.

Phantom Threat / Voter Fraud Myth

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
10. “Protecting the integrity of our elections by preventing illegal aliens from undermining our democracy”	Manufacture a nonexistent threat to justify voter suppression infrastructure. Noncitizen voting is statistically negligible, but asserting its existence creates the pretext for purging voter rolls and restricting access. The “protection” is the weapon.	Jim Crow literacy tests framed as “election integrity.” Hungary’s Orbán used “Soros-funded” migration to justify election law changes. Putin frames managed elections as defense against Western interference.

Militarism as Nostalgia

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
11. “A World War II hero who helped liberate the largest internment camp in the Philippines,” “Warrior Dividends,” law enforcement “respected once again”	Wrap current militarism in the unimpeachable moral authority of WWII. Conflating a genuine hero’s story with contemporary military adventurism transfers legitimacy from a justified war to unjustified ones. “Warrior Dividends” monetizes the mythology.	Reagan’s WWII references to justify Cold War escalation. Putin’s “Great Patriotic War” cult used to legitimize the Ukraine invasion. Mussolini invoking Rome. Every authoritarian regime attaches itself to prior military glory to launder current aggression.

Unfalsifiable Victory Claims

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
12. “Ending eight wars,” “total victory over terrorists abroad,” “peace through unmatched American strength”	Declare victory in conflicts the audience cannot independently verify. Which eight wars? Total victory where? These claims exist in a verification vacuum — they cannot be checked in real time, and by the time anyone tries, the news cycle has moved on.	Nixon’s “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.” Soviet claims of victory in Afghanistan. The forever war’s perpetual “turning the corner.”

Populist Bribery

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
13. “No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, No Tax on Social Security,” “Trump Accounts” for newborns, banning corporations from buying single-family homes	Scatter enough consumer-facing promises to create personal financial stakes in regime loyalty. Each item targets a specific demographic. The policies need not be real or enacted — the announcement itself is the product.	Perón’s aguinaldo (mandatory bonus). Chavez’s Bolivarian missions. Erdogan’s pre-election handouts. Putin’s pension increases timed to elections. Bread and circuses, updated for the 401(k) era.

Sacred Calendar

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
14. “National Day of Patriotic Devotion, 2026” in the related articles	Sacralizing the regime through mandatory civic ritual. Creating regime-specific holidays displaces existing civic traditions and establishes the leader’s calendar as the national temporal framework.	Mussolini’s Fascist calendar (Year I of the Fascist Era). Franco’s “Day of the Race.” Nazi Nationalfeiertag. North Korea’s Juche calendar. Turkmenistan’s Ruhnama Day.

Enemy Media Designation

What They Published	How It Works	Who Did It Before
15. “Media Offenders” page linked in site navigation	Official government designation of press outlets as enemies of the state, maintained as a permanent institutional feature rather than rhetorical flourish. Converts press criticism from democratic function to act of disloyalty.	Nazi Lügenpresse (lying press). Stalin’s purges of journalists. Erdogan’s mass closure of media outlets post-2016. Orbán’s systematic acquisition of independent Hungarian media. Duterte’s shutdown of ABS-CBN.

The Architecture, Not the Ingredients

Any single tactic on this list normally would be dismissed as deranged political hyperbole, excessive partisan messaging, or rhetorical overreach that causes conflict. That is exactly how military intelligence sets up a disinformation buffet to work. The effect does not depend on any individual dish, because it serves them all simultaneously on official White House china. As Trump observers monitor the house, those who digest are in trouble, and those who resist are even more in danger.

Military information operations doctrine FM 3-13 distinguishes between content and architecture.

Content is each of the fifteen individual tactics. Architecture is the system that connects all the content, such as the .gov blog post methodology. The White House use of military intelligence doctrine in an attack on the American public does three things at once with a known authoritarian architecture:

1. Establishes a loyalty test (who applauded)
2. Designates enemies both domestic (Democrats, media) and foreign (immigrants, Somalis, Venezuela)
3. Buries an act of war inside a consumer rewards program

That triple function of loyalty enforcement, enemy designation, and normalization of violence does something far beyond an actual press release. It is an operations order, which comes along with news that mass political prisons are being rushed at high cost to begin spraying people with “war power” authorized pesticides.

Use of the .gov domain and a blog post to attack Americans tells you how far and informal a normalization of military dictatorship has already progressed. Every technique was field-tested by a regime that did not survive its own ambitions. The historical record is not ambiguous about where an all-you-can-eat buffet approach to military intelligence leads.

The only question is whether Americans recognize the price of swallowing what Trump is dishing, before the bill is due.