Donald Trump is just not going to let this go anytime soon.
Despite his administration confirming that an American intelligence assessment on the effectiveness of last weekend’s airstrikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities is indeed real, the president took to his social media platform on Wednesday afternoon and demanded CNN terminate the reporter who broke the story.
“Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN!” Trump exclaimed on Truth Social. “I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog’.”
After claiming that Bertrand falsely reported other stories, the media-bashing president went on to claim that the CNN correspondent “lied about the Nuclear Sites Story” before accusing her of demeaning American troops with her reporting – an allegation he made earlier in the day about CNN as a whole.
“She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit ‘pay dirt’ — TOTAL OBLITERATION!” Trump added.
“She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN,” he concluded. “It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!”
While the president and other senior members of his administration have railed against CNN’s story, which was quickly matched by several other reputable news outlets, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth revealed on Wednesday that the intelligence assessment did exist. And that he was currently trying to find those who had leaked it to the media.
“We are doing a leak investigation with the FBI now, because this information is for internal purposes — battle damage investigation — and CNN and others are trying to spin it to try and make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success,” Hegseth told reporters at the NATO summit in The Hague, standing beside Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Hegseth went on to insist that the assessment, which suggests that the bombing raid may have only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months, was just a “preliminary” and “low-confidence” report about the damage caused and should not be seen as conclusive.
Since launching “Operation Midnight Hammer” on Saturday evening, which led to an on-again/off-again ceasefire between Iran and Israel, the president has crowed that the airstrikes were an “overwhelming success” that resulted in Tehran’s uranium enrichment capabilities being “completely and totally obliterated.”
However, almost immediately, national security and energy experts raised doubts that the bunker-busting bombs and Tomahawk missiles had fully decimated the deep underground facilities, adding that the Iranian government likely moved much of its enriched uranium before the bombings.
With the president already irate over cable news and broadcast networks airing skepticism over his claims that he had fully wiped out Iran’s nuclear program, he grew even angrier on Tuesday after CNN reported on the battle damage assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” the president blared in an all-caps post. “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”
Still, even as the president and his top aides were slamming the media over its reports on the assessment, which noted that Trump’s claims of a complete obliteration of Iran’s nuclear facilities were overstated, the White House acknowledged that the report existed while adding that they disagreed with it.
“This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Besides trying to refute an assessment that they admit is real as “fake news” while they simultaneously look to prosecute those who leaked it, the administration has also taken to accusing CNN of hating the troops for even reporting on it.
A day after calling the network “scum” for its coverage of the airstrikes on Iran, he continued to seethe at CNN – which he has relentlessly attacked for years – while claiming they had “demeaned” the United States military. “I just want to thank our pilots. You know, they were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news CNN,” he fumed on Wednesday.
“I first want to just address what was very blatantly manipulative from President Trump and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, saying that because of our reporting and other reporting about the preliminary US intel assessment, that is in some way disparaging members of the military involved in this mission,” CNN anchor Pamela Brown responded after Trump wrapped up his NATO press conference.
“That is false,” she added. “That is absolutely false, and that is a straw man argument.”
