Vibe-decoding the White House-Anthropic fight over Fable
There are multiple versions of the Mythos omnishambles. Whose is right?
by Tina Nguyen
Jun 17, 2026, 12:27 PM EDT
Back when I was covering Donald Trump’s first presidency, it was incredibly common to read three different versions of the same story. His administration had split into several factions, all of which had different interests, and all of which hated each other. There was the Reince Priebus traditional GOP faction, the Manhattan society-based Jared Kushner faction, the proto-populist Steve Bannon faction, the deep state John Kelly faction, the conspiracy-MAGA Mike Lindell faction, and so forth. Over time, you could get a sense of which camp was leaking which narratives to the media, either to undermine their rivals or to save their own reputations. In fact, for several decades, media manipulation was a common survival tactic in Trumpworld, which often ran on factionalism and fierce competition for Trump’s approval. As The Associated Press reported on November 26, 2016 in an article about his pre-presidency business management style, “[a]ides also often float suggestions to him through the media, knowing that Trump is a voracious watcher of cable TV and might be persuaded by what he sees and hears.”
This tendency toward back-biting and cross-purposes once again gives us a little insight into the White House, this time explaining some of the omnishambles around the Trump admin’s Friday night decision to impose licensing restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced Fable model.
