Donald Trump is not happy over the leaked Pentagon intelligence that found the strikes against Iran over the weekend were not as damaging as the president and his administration have been claiming. CNN and The New York Times both reported on the government’s preliminary information about the efficacy of the attacks on Tuesday, and Trump has spent the past few days incessantly attacking the outlets while repeatedly insisting that strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The details of the intelligence report — which found that the strikes only partially damaged their targets and likely only set back Iran’s nuclear program a few months — went public as Trump was attending a NATO summit in the Netherlands, and his comments at the meeting of the allied nations largely revolved around the Iran strikes and how “disgusting” and “horrible” the media is for reporting on the government’s early findings about what happened. Trump’s Truth Social account has meanwhile been rife with all-caps attacks against CNN and the Times, as well as calls for everyone involved to be fired. “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!” he wrote this morning.
Trump also used Truth Social to tease an early-morning press conference from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who berated the media today alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine. “How many stories have been written about how hard it is to fly a plane for 36 hours?” a visibly enraged Hegseth asked the congregated press, referring to the mission to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites, which he described as “the most complex and secretive military operation in history.”
“How about we celebrate that?” Hegseth continued in his screed about the media’s coverage of the strikes. “How about we talk about how successful America is, that only we have these capabilities? I think it’s too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news.”
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Hegseth even went after one of his former colleagues, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News, who asked about the administration’s confidence that Iran did not preemptively move uranium from the sites of the strikes, which the Pentagon’s preliminary report indicated was likely. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most, intentionally, what the president said,” he said.
The chaotic scene today at the Pentagon, and on Trump’s Truth Social feed, is part of an administration-wide effort to defend the strikes, discredit the leaked intelligence report, and inflate the president’s ego while chastising or threatening those casting the strikes as anything short of a historic success.
The president has been especially sensitive about the prospect of Iran having moved uranium ahead of the strikes. In recent days, a person with direct knowledge of the situation tells Rolling Stone that the president has been sensitive about any reporting suggesting stockpiles had been moved, in part because Trump essentially tipped off the Iranians by teasing that the U.S. could take action. “It really pisses him off when people say that,” this source says, noting that would undermine Trump’s assertion of how “perfectly” this operation was conducted.
Trump claimed on Truth Social as Hegseth berated the media today that “nothing was taken out of the facility” and that the trucks appearing on satellite imaging ahead of the strikes “were those of concrete workers.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other top officials have leapt to Trump’s defense in response to the leaked report — but Hegseth may be the tip of the spear.
One Trump adviser tells Rolling Stone that they chuckled at the former Fox News host’s seemingly prepared line about how Trump’s bombing operation was “the most complex and secretive military operation” ever — or, in this source’s paraphrase, even “better than D-Day.”
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This adviser says it immediately reminded them of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s much-ridiculed declaration that Trump’s first 2017 inauguration had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”
Trump has joined Hegseth in pushing absurd exaggerations about the efficacy of the strikes, and, not surprisingly given that the intelligence report did not parrot the president’s talking points, the current propaganda blitz is accompanied by yet another one of Trump’s sprawling leak crackdowns. As Rolling Stone first reported, the leak of classified material to outlets such as CNN and The New York Times quickly triggered a particularly aggressive investigation, with Trump and other senior administration officials fuming that this could have happened.
The leak hunt was launched concurrently with the Trump team’s broader clampdown on intelligence and sensitive information. Staff at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the federal government were personally warned by superiors that if they had anything to do with this disclosure to the media, they could be facing serious prison time, two sources with knowledge of the matter say.
Additionally, Trump lieutenants moved to put an even tighter stranglehold on the amount of classified information it shares with Congress. “We are declaring a war on leakers,” one senior White House official told Axios. Leavitt said Wednesday that “the FBI is investigating who was the source of that leak because it’s an illegal leak to CNN.”
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It’s still too soon to know the reality of the operation’s effectiveness. Caine was asked about this uncertainty during the press conference with Hegseth today. “General, on Sunday you said final battle damage will take some time … and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there,” a reporter began before asking Caine, “What has changed? Would you use the term ‘obliterated,’ as well?”
Caine began to answer before Hegseth cut in and started attacking the media’s “irresponsible” coverage of the operation.