Raw Story⁠93%

'Conspiracy of silence' critics urge CIA director to 'stand up to Trump' or 'resign' ⁠66%

By Tom Boggioni⁠87%

7/23/2026, 12:34:25 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Anecdotal, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 29.2% saturation with 136 hits. Analysis detected 787 faulty-reasoning hits from 465 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60% and a BS Rank of ⁠66% (7,284 of 21,159 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.60% of the article peer group.

President Donald Trump's election theft speech put his CIA director in the spotlight — and now calls are mounting for him to push back, according to a new report. 
Questions are being raised about Director John Ratcliffe's conduct during the initial investigation into foreign election tampering and his silence now as the president fires off "Looney Tunes" accusations , MS NOW's David Rohde reported Thursday. 
Ratcliffe's complicity—or silence—has become impossible to ignore, according to Rohde. 
As Trump's current CIA director, Ratcliffe served as Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 through January 2021, controlling what intelligence reached the president's desk and what remained hidden. 
The timing, Rohde argued, is damning. 
Trump claimed in his recent speech that U.S. intelligence agencies discovered Chinese interference in the 2020 election but deliberately concealed it from him. 
Yet Ratcliffe was the gatekeeper deciding what Trump saw and didn't see during that exact period, Rohde noted. 
Trump's declassified documents, released to support his election fraud narrative, claim U.S. intelligence learned in 2020 that China had "bought, stolen or hacked" tens of millions of Americans' voting records. 
According to Trump, spy agencies kept this bombshell secret. 
But Ratcliffe was one of the officials who decided what warranted inclusion in Trump's daily briefings, Rohde wrote. 
He argued if the intelligence existed as Trump claims, then Ratcliffe bore responsibility for either including or excluding it. 
"Critics say that Ratcliffe should stand up to Trump and threaten to resign — or actually resign — as cabinet members did in his first term, including former Defense Secretary Gen. 
Jim Mattis, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former CIA director Gina Haspel ," Rohde wrote. 
Instead, Ratcliffe has maintained silence—enabling what former CIA analyst Julia Curlee describes as a "conspiracy of silence" enveloping Washington. 
Curlee, who recently resigned after 20 years of service, told MS NOW, "To me, it was crossing a Rubicon where the institution itself was being conscripted into the creation of a product to reinforce the president's messaging. 
I never thought that I would see the CIA participating in a presidential effort to delegitimize elections in the eyes of Americans." 
Former senior CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos acknowledged Ratcliffe's impossible position: protecting both his job and the CIA's institutional integrity while serving a president hostile to both. 
"Ratcliffe certainly does need to play it both ways in some respects, as he's got a workforce at CIA that will not react well to sources and methods being compromised based on cherry-picked intelligence to promote Looney Tunes conspiracy theories," Polymeropoulos, an MS NOW contributor added. 
"But at the same time, he's gotta protect his job from the mercurial Trump. 
So far, he's managed to successfully dance through the raindrops on this issue." 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 14.0%Tom Boggioni: 4.8%Rawstory: 7.8%Confirmation Bias14.0%This article: 1.3%Tom Boggioni: 1.4%Rawstory: 0.7%Anchoring Bias1.3%This article: 8.0%Tom Boggioni: 6.8%Rawstory: 4.4%Availability Heuristic8.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 1.1%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.3%Rawstory: 1.0%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.7%Rawstory: 2.2%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 20.8%Rawstory: 13.6%Framing Effect0.0%This article: 3.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.0%Rawstory: 0.4%Loss Aversion3.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.1%Rawstory: 0.4%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 2.8%Tom Boggioni: 0.7%Rawstory: 0.7%Optimism Bias2.8%This article: 20.0%Tom Boggioni: 5.4%Rawstory: 2.8%Pessimism Bias20.0%This article: 16.6%Tom Boggioni: 28.2%Rawstory: 21.9%Negativity Bias16.6%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.4%Rawstory: 1.2%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 3.9%Tom Boggioni: 3.9%Rawstory: 2.9%Fundamental Attribution Error3.9%This article: 5.6%Tom Boggioni: 0.6%Rawstory: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias5.6%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.2%Rawstory: 2.6%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.2%Rawstory: 1.6%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.7%Rawstory: 0.6%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.2%Rawstory: 0.9%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.2%Rawstory: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.9%Rawstory: 1.7%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.6%Rawstory: 0.7%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.3%Rawstory: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 9.9%Tom Boggioni: 2.3%Rawstory: 6.4%Ad Hominem9.9%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.5%Rawstory: 0.7%Straw Man0.0%This article: 3.4%Tom Boggioni: 4.8%Rawstory: 3.8%Appeal to Authority3.4%This article: 4.1%Tom Boggioni: 1.8%Rawstory: 2.9%False Dilemma4.1%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.7%Rawstory: 1.2%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.3%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 1.3%Tom Boggioni: 10.5%Rawstory: 12.0%Hasty Generalization1.3%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.6%Red Herring0.0%This article: 6.7%Tom Boggioni: 1.1%Rawstory: 0.8%Bandwagon6.7%This article: 29.2%Tom Boggioni: 8.5%Rawstory: 9.2%Appeal to Emotion29.2%This article: 4.1%Tom Boggioni: 1.2%Rawstory: 1.5%Begging the Question4.1%This article: 3.9%Tom Boggioni: 2.4%Rawstory: 3.6%Post Hoc (False Cause)3.9%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.6%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 1.0%Rawstory: 1.6%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.1%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.4%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 16.8%Tom Boggioni: 4.8%Rawstory: 4.0%Anecdotal16.8%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.3%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 2.2%Tom Boggioni: 3.9%Rawstory: 2.4%Ambiguity (Equivocation)2.2%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.4%Rawstory: 0.2%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.0%Rawstory: 0.4%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 5.4%Rawstory: 5.5%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 4.1%Rawstory: 4.2%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 12.7%Tom Boggioni: 19.7%Rawstory: 15.4%Biased Writer Voice12.7%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.7%Rawstory: 3.1%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 4.1%Rawstory: 7.9%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.9%Rawstory: 1.0%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Tom Boggioni: 0.5%Rawstory: 0.5%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

465 words analyzed.

Speakers

2speakers31%attributed speech320writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 14 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 29 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 36 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 29 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 6 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 18 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 30 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 9 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 18 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 19 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 31 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 16 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 19 words • 0.0% coverageJulia Curlee • 37 words • 0.0% coverageJulia Curlee • 22 words • 0.0% coverageMarc Polymeropoulos • 26 words • 0.0% coverageMarc Polymeropoulos • 46 words • 100.0% coverageMarc Polymeropoulos • 14 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 13 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

Julia Curlee

100%flagged-word coverage
59 attributed words41% of attributed speech53% writer coverage
0%2.5%5.0%Biased Writer Voice-4.1 ptsWriter: 4.1%Julia Curlee: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.