CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale torpedoed Trump Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s press conference on the Iran airstrikes, saying that Hegseth essentially confirmed the CNN reports he was trying to deride.
Hegseth and President Donald Trump have been raging for days at CNN and others over coverage of a series of surprise U.S. airstrikes on nuclear sites in Iran, claiming that their reporting on the extent of the damage is hurtful to the servicemembers who carried out the strike.
Much of that rage has been focused on bombshell reporting from CNN and the NYT about an intelligence assessment that shows the strikes may only have set Iran’s nuclear program back by a matter of months, a leak that the FBI is now purportedly investigating.
That rage carried over to a Defense Department press conference Tuesday morning that was designed to bolster the administration’s claims that the strikes “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
But on Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Dale pointed out that Hegseth — like Trump — attacked CNN as “fake news” even as he confirmed that the reporting accurately depicted the early assessment of the damage from the strikes:
SARA SIDNER: What did you hear in this press conference that rang true or that rang false?DANIEL DALE: Well, a few things here. The secretary referred to “fake news CNN” and then immediately proceeded to effectively confirm CNN’s reporting.Again, emphasized that
this intelligence assessment was preliminary, made with low confidence. That’s exactly, again, what CNN reported.He also tried to back up President Trump’s assertion that these nuclear facilities were completely and totally obliterated by forcefully reading out quotes from others who did not say the same thing.He read quotes asserting that the nuclear sites had been badly damaged, severely damaged. The strikes have done enormous damage. None of that is synonymous with complete obliteration.The secretary also asked rhetorically if the media had been reporting about the enormous challenge on pilots of conducting a bombing mission this long.Well, guess what? CNN did. A couple of days ago, Michael Williams wrote a story talking to pilots who had been involved in somewhat similar missions that began that this mission was a, quote, “massive undertaking that required B-2 bomber pilots to test the limits of human endurance during a 37-hour mission.”So yes, CNN reported this.And then fourth, just in passing, the secretary asserted that this was “the most complex military operation in history.”I guess that’s something I can’t definitively fact check, but I’m sure that some military historians would take issue with that, point to things like, say, D-Day, for example.
Watch above via CNN News Central.