United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth blasted the liberal activist press for misleading the American public by denying the success of the recent U.S. airstrikes that decimated three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Sec. Hegseth called out the leftist, agenda-driven legacy media for reporting the findings of a leaked, unreliable, preliminary report suggesting the airstrikes failed – and dwelling on that report even after it was disproved. – at a briefing this morning exclaiming:
“Because you, and I mean specifically YOU, the press…you cheer against Trump so hard, it's in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump, because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective."
Hegseth went on to describe the propaganda-propelled media mindset behind the misrepresentation:
"You have to hope ‘Maybe, the way the Trump administration is represented isn't true. So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind, the public mind, over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.’”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with a bullseye on the liberal media and the Deep State’s penchant for using anonymous sources and leaks to undermine President Trump: “[B]ecause you cheer against trump so hard. It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because… pic.twitter.com/gfFIkKf6Bd
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 26, 2025
The leaked intelligence claims that the U.S. airstrikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months and that the nuclear facilities were not “completely and fully obliterated,” as President Trump has reported.
However, the White House has rejected the Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, calling it wildly inaccurate, as have other authoritative officials including the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
But, the confirmation of the mission’s success by the White House, National Intelligence and others hasn’t stopped the media from running with the narrative that the attack on Iran on June 21 was ineffective and left the centrifuges in the nuclear cites “largely intact.”
Hegseth himself has claimed that the report, while top secret,” was preliminary and of “low confidence.” In other words, there was little reason to trust its findings, much less publicly portray its findings as fact.
The politically-motivated leaking and media reporting of the unreliable assessment undermine the heroic actions of the military personnel who participated in the airstrikes now known as “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Hegseth said.
Instead of trying to disparage the operation, the media should be running stories about how the U.S. pilots successfully overcame the extreme challenges of the mission:
“How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done the story how hard that is?"
....
“There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that because of the hatred of this press corps are undermined because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful. It's irresponsible."