Trump set a new exchange rate on Truth Social this morning: every time Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, “the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT.” Caps his. One ship, one piece of infrastructure. A loyalty program, except the points are airstrikes. * Here’s how CNN’s live blog topped it: Trump “vows to hit” an Iranian bridge or power plant each time Tehran strikes ships. Vows. The verb for weddings, monks, and people who swear they’re joining a gym in January. * A vow is a promise you’re admired for keeping. What the post actually describes — pick a bridge, possibly near or inside Tehran, and level it — has a plainer name, and Al Jazeera used it: Trump “threatens to bomb a power plant for each ship strike.” Same post. Same caps lock. One newsroom heard a solemn commitment; the other heard what the sentence says. * Fox, for the record, grabbed the same soft verb back when the power plants first went on the menu: “Trump vows US will strike Iran’s power plants, bridges.” So this isn’t a left-right thing. It’s a headline-desk habit: “vows” sounds decisive, “threatens” sounds like an accusation, and nobody wants to sound like they’re accusing the president of the thing he posted in capital letters. * The word that goes missing in the “vow” version is who’s underneath it. A bridge doesn’t shoot at ships. A power plant doesn’t either. The people crossing one and plugged into the other definitely don’t. When the target is infrastructure, the headline verb is doing moral bookkeeping — “vows” files the bombing under promises kept, “threatens” files it under threats made. * We’re not asking anyone to editorialize. “Threatens” isn’t an opinion — it’s the dictionary. When a man publishes a one-for-one price list of things he’ll destroy, the neutral verb is the blunt one. The wedding language is the spin.