Thread by @davidfrum

Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Pete was in Cairo on the day the war started. He was awoken early by air raid sirens. He turned on Radio Cairo to listen for news. Time passed until an announcer delivered a bulletin. "The Zionists attacked at dawn. We shot down six of their planes and suffered no losses." 2/x

Pete shaved and prepared to go visit the air ministry for himself. The announcer returned to the air. "Update: we shot down TWELVE Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

He understood the Egyptians had suffered a bad defeat. 3/x

He finished dressing, knotted his tie, and the announcer was back.

"Update again. We shot down FIFTY Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

That's when he realized that the entire Egyptian air force had been wiped out.

4/x

(NB I may have the figures wrong in the anecdote, I'm telling the story from memory, but you get the idea.)

5/x

But there's more!

Nasser's habit of telling absurd lies led him to multiplying

By Day 2 of the war, the truth of what happened on Day 1 could not be concealed. So Nasser now told a new lie: yes his air force had been wiped out - but not by the feeble Zionists. 6/x

No, the attack on the Egyptian Air Force had been the work of the US Mediterranean fleet! This new lie so outraged President Johnson that he refused to talk to Nasser for 48 hours of ever more radical Egyptian military disaster. Story told here penguinrandomhouse.com/books/124784/s… 7/x

Anyway, bottom line for Trump: smaller lies last longer.
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