President Donald Trump is bent on disproving the embarrassing intelligence assessment of his strikes on Iran.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and military officials will hold a press conference at the Pentagon on Thursday morning “to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.”
Administration officials have united behind an effort to downplay a preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency contradicting Trump’s claims that the U.S. strikes on Iran over the weekend “obliterated” the three nuclear sites they targeted.
The early assessment, leaked to CNN and The New York Times on Tuesday, found that the attack did not significantly damage the nuclear enrichment sites, and at most, only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months.
“These Patriots were very upset! After 36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory, they landed, they knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News by CNN and The Failing New York Times,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “They felt terribly!”
Though Trump and his officials have branded the bombshell reporting as “fake news”—with the president going so far as to call for the firing of the CNN reporter who broke the story—they have also acknowledged the existence of the assessment and waved it off as low-confidence and inconclusive.
“The Fake News (Times and CNN) lied and totally misrepresented the Facts, none of which they had (because it was too soon, there were no Facts out there yet!)” Trump said. “The News Conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable. Enjoy!”
Hegseth told reporters earlier on Wednesday that defense officials were working with the FBI to investigate the leak.
“When you talk to the people who built the bombs, understand what those bombs can do, and deliver those bombs, they landed precisely where they were supposed to,” he said. “And given the 30,000 pounds of explosives, and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordow.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe also said “a body of credible intelligence,” which includes new information, supports Trump’s claims that the strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program.
Both CNN and The Times have stood by their reporting amid an onslaught of attacks from MAGAworld.
“President Trump called this ‘fake news.’ But he and his entire national security team subsequently confirmed that the Defense Intelligence Agency did in fact produce the preliminary assessment,” The Times said. ”So their statement was fake, not The Times’s reporting.”
CNN said its reporting made clear that the intelligence assessment was only an initial finding that could change as new information comes in.
“However, 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.
But White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had no patience for CNN and took the opportunity to slam the network for its previous reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“The nerve of this statement,” Cheung said. “Nobody is above criticizing journalists, especially ones who have repeatedly reported fake news like the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax? Go to hell.”
