President Donald Trump continued hostile word salvos toward two major media companies even as his Pentagon chief conceded the reporting on the initial damage assessment was accurate..
On a social media post June 25 the irate president accused CNN and the New York Times of “cheating again.” Trump’s post called the reporters “BAD AND SICK PEOPLE.” He added: “You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to always make our country look bad.”
He later demanded that CNN fire reporter Natasha Bertrand and throw her “out like a dog.” It was a demand the network subsequently rebuked.
Trump continued raging on June 26.
In a series of posts denigrating the coverage as “disgusting and incompetent,” Trump claimed “rumor is that” the reporters at both news organizations would be fired. He called the journalists “bad people with evil intentions” and touted a Pentagon press briefing aimed at refuting the coverage as “one of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ news conferences I have ever seen!”
What exactly triggered Trump’s raging?
What sparked Trump’s ire are ongoing reports and coverage that the bombing of three Iran nuclear facilities by U.S. B-2 warplanes on June 21 did not deliver the knockout punch Trump and his administration have claimed.
Despite the president’s fury, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the report’s findings though he labeled them “low confidence.” Moreover, Hegseth said the Pentagon is conducting a “leak investigation with the FBI” saying the report’s “battle damage assessments” were for “internal purposes” only.
Hegseth also acknowledged the pushback by the administration stemmed not from erroneous or fake news but from a belief the media coverage was intended to “spin it to make the president look bad.”
What did CNN and the New York Times report?
On June 25, CNN updated its story saying: “The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it. The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.”
The New York Times also reported the following on June 24: “A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings. The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded. Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.”
Trump has been lashing out at the news agencies since June 24, including in more than a dozen posts on Truth Social while in The Netherlands for a NATO summit.
In one all capital letters post, Trump went hyperbolic in alleging the two media giants of “teamed up in an attempt to demean the most successful military strikes in history.”
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Did the bombs take out Iranian targets? Trump says yes, CNN, NYT reporting says maybe not
Reporting by Antonio Fins, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
