Politics
WATCH: Pete Hegseth Obliterates CNN, New York Times In Viral Takedown At NATO
Much like the wastelands of Iran where nuclear enrichment facilities once stood, CNN and the New York Times were obliterated on Wednesday.
However, their demise came at the hands of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, not President Donald Trump, when he put both mainstream news outlets on blast for one-sided reporting about a leaked document suggesting Iran’s nuclear facilities are still standing.
While taking questions alongside Trump, Hegseth told a roomful of NATO attendees, “There’s a reason the president calls out fake news for what it is.”
“These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders. The skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people and the world to take out a nuclear program. It is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom,” Hegseth told a hushed crowd.
He then singled out CNN and the New York Times for following their “instinct” to allegedly challenge the bravery and competence of U.S. service members participating in Operation Midnight Hammer, which resulted in 12 “bunker buster” bombs landing on the three Iranian facilities.
“Then the instinct of CNN and New York Times is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons to try to hurt President Trump or our country.”
“They don’t care what the troops think. They don’t care what the world thinks. They want to spin it to try to make the President look bad based on a leak,” he said with palpable anger in his voice.
Earlier in the day, Hegseth announced that the Pentagon and FBI were conducting a joint investigation to determine the source of the leaked report, which came from an intelligence arm of the Pentagon and concluded that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was set back by just several months as a result of the bombings.
Contrary to President Trump’s first term, the number of anonymous government sources has dropped noticeably, underscoring how much more disciplined and devoted employees in the second Trump administration are this time around.
Hegseth railed against the government employees behind the leak.
“Of course we know what leakers are. What do leakers have? They have agendas,” Hegseth railed. “And what do they do? Do they share the whole information or just the part that they want to introduce? And then they introduce that preliminary, preliminary report that’s deemed to be a ‘low assessment’ — you know what ‘low assessment’ means? It means low confidence in the data in that report.”
“Why is there low confidence? Because all of the evidence of what was just bombed by 12 30,000-pound bombs is buried under a mountain.”
WATCH:
In the face of both news reports, the Trump administration, including the president himself, has stayed remarkably on message over the “obliteration” they claim resulted from the operation. Assurances have been echoed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who both downplayed the U.S. intelligence assessment and insisted that the bombs severely disrupted Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
President Trump used part of the NATO summit to single out Kaitlan Collins, the gadfly CNN reporter who has become a frequent foil of his during press conferences.
“Oh, fake news CNN? Ayayai, here we go,” he said, shielding his eyes from the lights as he looked for Collins in the crowd.
“Wait ’til you hear this question. You should really say how great our soldiers and warriors are,” he added as the audience laughed.
A stone-faced Collins replied, “I think everyone appreciates our soldiers and our warriors.”