President Donald Trump accused the media of demeaning the military after the initial U.S. intelligence report on Iran leaked.
The president did not deny the existence of the preliminary assessment or its content, which suggested the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities resulted in limited damage, but he insisted it was wrong.
He also claimed to have spoken to one of the pilots, who told him it was a “perfect” bomb drop.
Trump first harangued reporters with claims that they attacked the brave men and women who carried out what was an operationally successful mission on Saturday night to drop the bombs and exit Iran without being fired on.
“They were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news CNN,” Trump claimed on Wednesday.
The media did report on the U.S. intel assessment, but it did not demean pilots who carried out the mission.
He continued minutes later when he repeated his claim that the reports criticized the men and women who carried out the mission.
“They’re the best shots in the world. They call them shots, that’s what they are, and wait a minute, and I just hope you can give them the respect they deserve because they came home to fake news and like gosh, oh gee, there was hardly any damage,” Trump said of the pilots.
The early intelligence undermining Trump’s repeated claims that the sites were obliterated came from the Defense Intelligence Agency within the Pentagon.
When a reporter again tried to bring up the assessment at his press conference, the president fired back, “You should be proud of those pilots, and you shouldn’t be trying to demean them.”
The reporter, Kelly O’Donnell from NBC News, tried to cut in that she was trying to ask about the intel assessment, and no one was trying to demean the pilots, but Trump kept going.
“You know what, you should be praising those people instead of trying to find something,” Trump said. “By getting me, by trying to go and get me, you’re hurting those people. They were devastated.”
“I got a call from Missouri, big state that I won three times by a lot, and I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimize the attack, and they all said it was a hit,” the president claimed.
The U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer on Saturday were a major logistical feat that involved careful planning and execution.
The B-2 stealth bombers, each with two crew members, took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri early Saturday and refueled midair multiple times as they made the eighteen-hour journey over more than 7,000 miles to Iran.
Before entering Iran, the B-2s were also accompanied by fighter jets and recon aircraft.
Once over Iran, the bombers struck the nuclear sites at Fordo and Natanz while a submarine launched missiles striking Isfahan.
The B-2s then began the long journey back to the U.S. with multiple aerial refueling points along the way.
The entire mission took roughly 36 hours to execute round-trip. Join Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine said the bombers were able to carry out the mission over Iran undetected.
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke at the press conference, the former TV personality also attacked reporters and accused them of trying to hurt the president even as they tried to ask about the early assessment from his own department.
Hegseth praised the team that carried out the mission, but quickly turned to blasting the leak. He did not dispute that the assessment existed or its content, but he did say it was early.
“If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel and go really deep,” he declared.
