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On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump doubled down on his sharp critique of mainstream news outlets’ coverage, particularly CNN and The New York Times, of Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. military’s precision strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Following his early morning post on Truth Social, where he accused CNN and the New York Times of “AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” the 47th president cited Israel’s assessment of the nuclear sites.
“Israel just stated that the Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED! Thank you to our great B-2 pilots, and all others involved!”
A short time later, he called for the firing of one CNN reporter. “Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’ She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit ‘pay dirt’ — TOTAL OBLITERATION!”
Earlier in the day, President Trump ripped the outlets during a press conference at the NATO summit in the Netherlands. Joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum that’s in this group, and not all of you are, you have some great reporters, but you have scum. CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick. And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less. Now, even they admit that it was hit very hard, okay, but it wasn’t hit hard, it was hit brutally, and it knocked it out. The original word that I use, I guess it got us in trouble because it’s a strong word, it was obliteration.”
Hegseth backed him up, accusing the media outlets of using “leaks” to undermine the operation’s success. “The instinct of CNN, the instinct of the New York Times, is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons, to try to hurt President Trump or our country.”