President Donald Trump is repeatedly condemning CNN and The New York Times for reports that call into question the damage caused by last weekend’s U.S. strikes of Iran — and downplaying his own intelligence analysts in the process.
Trump on Wednesday called on CNN to throw out “like a dog” a reporter who has worked on the story and suggested Times reporters were “bad and sick people” who were attempting to demean American pilots involved in the strikes.
Both news outlets defended their reporting.
The president is angry about stories that a preliminary assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had said Saturday’s strike of three nuclear sites had set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months. The assessment “suggests that President Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities were ‘obliterated’ was overstated,” The Times said in a six-bylined story on Tuesday night.
Shortly after the reports began circulating, Trump disputed them, saying in a social media post that the nuclear sites were completely destroyed, and he doubled down on Wednesday.
“They tried to demean the great works our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so,” Trump wrote. “These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE. You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to make our Country look bad.”
Newspaper says Trump’s criticism was fake news
The Times noted that Trump had initially called the report fake news, but he and his national security team subsequently confirmed that the report was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“So their statement was fake, not the Times’s reporting,” Times spokesman Charles Stadtlander said. “We’ll continue to report fully on the administration’s decision-making, including the president’s dispute with the Defense Intelligence Agency, as we did this morning.”
Trump specifically singled out CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand and called for her firing. “I watched her for three days doing Fake News,” the president wrote. “She should be immediately reprimanded, then thrown out ‘like a dog.’”
CNN said that it stood by Bertrand and the network’s reporting. The network has made clear that it was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence, and reported the president’s own skepticism about what his experts had found.
“We do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest,” the network said in a statement.
Trump amplifies his certainty about Iran strikes
The White House, in its own statement criticizing CNN, called parts of the early defense agency report an “inconclusive, low-confidence intelligence assessment” that was leaked to undermine Trump and pilots who conducted the mission.
“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: Total Obliteration,” the White House said, repeating the phrase Trump has used repeatedly to describe the mission. The release quoted assessments from different agencies on bomb damage.
In calling patriotism into question, the president and his allies also attempted a strategy used in the past to demean reporters and create doubts about their work. In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins on Tuesday night, GOP Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullins pushed back against questions on the strike, saying it should be celebrated and not be “something we are bringing division on.”
Collins replied that it’s her job to ask questions, not to celebrate.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
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