Trump Torches ‘Disgraceful’ CNN, ‘Failing’ NYT Over Leaked Iran Intel Report: ‘Fake News!’
President Donald Trump has hit back at reports downplaying the impact of U.S. airstrikes on Iran, accusing “disgraceful” CNN and the “failing” New York Times of distorting early intelligence to embarrass his administration.
Speaking at the NATO summit in The Hague, the president dismissed a classified assessment leaked to CNN and The Times that suggested Operation Midnight Hammer only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a matter of months.
That report, based on briefings from three sources familiar with the early analysis, claimed the strikes, which deployed over a dozen bunker-busting GBU-57 bombs, failed to destroy Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and left most centrifuges “intact.” A senior source reportedly told CNN that the U.S. may have set Iran’s program back “maybe a few months, tops.”
Trump rejected that view outright, insisting the report was “very inconclusive” before doubling down that the Iranian sites suffered “total obliteration” – adding that Israel would soon release corroborating findings to support his version of events.
Trump was backed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sat alongside him, both of whom took aim at the leak rather than its contents.
“It was a top secret report, it was preliminary, it was low confidence,” Hegseth said. “This is a political motive here. Of course, we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments, and CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”
Trump interjected: “We had a tremendous success, and this is the New York Times, I call it the failing New York Times. It’s going to hell. And CNN, which, as you know, very few people are watching. And you would think they’d do the opposite. You would think that they’d want to say, this was an unbelievable success. And the thing that hurts me is it’s really demeaning to the pilots and the people that put that whole thing together, the generals. That was a perfect operation.”
Rubio insisted Iran had suffered a major blow and blasted the leakers as “professional stabbers”: “All this leaker stuff, these leakers are professional stabbers. That’s what they are. They go out and they read this stuff, and then they tell you what it says against the law, but they characterize it for you in a way that’s absolutely false. There’s no way Iran comes to the table if somehow nothing had happened. This was complete and total obliteration. They’re in bad shape. They are way behind today compared to where they were just seven days ago because of what the president did.”
Trump then cited Iranian sources before rounding on the outlets once again: “Two Iranians went down to see it, and then they called back and they said, ‘This place is gone’. So it’s just fake news by CNN, which has got no ratings. It’s a failed network. Anybody here from CNN, by the way? Because you’re a really disgraceful network. MSNBC, I think, is actually worse, but they’re all pretty bad.”
The remarks came after Trump took to Truth Social to hit back at The Times and CNN for running the report:
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 NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!
After the report was published, the White House has not denied the existence of the report but has discredited it and its source with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the leaker “an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community” and arguing CNN’s framing of the assessment was “flat-out wrong.”
Watch above via Associated Press.
