Jun 26, 2025 | Pete Hegseth sets the record straight on Iran strikes and blasts the press for bias

Hi everyone!
 

Defense Sec Pete Hegseth blasted the media to their faces this morning in an 8 am press conference to dispel the anon-sourced reports from CNN and other outlets that claimed the US Saturday night strike on Iran was ineffective. "We're here this morning because in hunting for scandals all the time, in trying to find wedges and spin stories, this press corps and the [White House] press corps miss historic moments," Hegseth said, talking about the NATO nations agreeing to spend 5% GDP each on defense before going on to discuss "the bottom line."

"President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history," he said, "and it was a resounding success, resulting in a cease-fire agreement and the end of the 12-Day War. There's been a lot of discussion about what happened and what didn't happen. Step back for second: because of decisive military action, President Trump created the conditions to end the war."

He called out CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times for their "fawning coverage" of the preliminary assessment, saying that "every outlet has breathlessly reported on a preliminary assessment." Hegseth read that assessment, which had not been seen in full by any of the outlets who relied on nameless sources' assessment of the preliminary, "low confidence" assessment. Hegseth said the report was a "linchpin" report, meaning that the report relies on one thing upon which a thousand assessments hinge.

"It was preliminary," he said, "a day and a half after the actual strike, when it admits itself, in writing, that it requires weeks to accumulate the necessary data to make such an assessment. It's preliminary. It points out that it's not been coordinated with the intelligence community at all. There's low confidence in this particular report. It says in the report there are gaps in the information. It says in the report, multiple linchpin assumptions are what this assessment—You know what that is?"

"That means your entire premise is predicated on a linchpin. If you're wrong, everything else is wrong, and yet, and still, this report acknowledges it's likely severe damage," Hegseth said. "Again, this is preliminary, but leaked because someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn't successful." He went on to say that the defense intelligence agency that put out the report said that it was preliminary and would "continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available." The leakers are under investigation by the FBI.

The White House sent out their own assessment on the assessment as well, saying "Intel assessments are a snapshot analysis based on limited intel from one moment in time. This particular assessment, parts of which leaked from someone clearly trying to undermine the President, was based on intel from ONE DAY after the strike. The assessment admits it was NOT coordinated with the intel community. The assessment acknowledged it was a low-confidence level report with several gaps in information. The CNN reporter who wrote this Fake News story—Natasha Bertrand—is the SAME reporter who wrote the original story alleging the Hunter Biden laptop was 'Russian Disinformation.'"

On Monday, CNN dropped a report from 3 anonymous sources within the White House, a leak that press secretary Karoline Leavitt said came from "low level losers" who are now being investigated by the FBI. Those sources told CNN that a preliminary report after the strike said that the nuclear programs in Iran were not actually destroyed and that their nuclear weapons plans would be back on track in just a matter of months. This was picked up and spread around by media outlets who seem to want the president, and the nation to fail.

Hegseth took aim at the press, saying "You cheer against Trump because you want him to not be successful so bad you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective, maybe the way the Trump administration is representing this isn't true, so let's take half-truth, 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."

When Trump took office for the first time in 2017, the Washington Post implemented a reporter whose entire job was to issue fact checks against the president. Day after day he would dig into comments from the Oval Office and garnish them with Pinocchio noses to indicate how big of a lie he thought it was.

Then Joe Biden came into the White House, in the heat of Covid, in the aftermath of George Floyd, BLM, trans activism, and after just a little bit, that fact checker, Glenn Kessler, said he would stop maintaining a fact check database for Biden. When he said he would not be maintaining his "Biden database" beyond 100 days he was rightfully called out for his liberal bias.

Every reporter wants to be Woodward and Bernstein, to break the big story, to hold the mirror up to power, to expose dirty deeds, wrongdoing, and fabrications, but sometimes the news is just the news, not everything has a seedy underbelly, despite what Freud said about the Clinton affair, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Time will tell if the preliminary, low confidence, linchpin report has merit or not, and assessing intelligence data is certainly not something in my current (or likely future) skill set, but I want to believe that our nation does not bend toward the slimy but intends to serve the interests of the American people and our national prosperity, if that should be our collective will. I don't think that is the bias of our current media establishment which I think believes its mission is to undermine national interests because it—seemingly collectively—believes that America is a force of badness in the world. I just don't, won't, and can't think that this is true.