Trump slams CNN, NYT for ‘fake news’ about Iranian nuclear facility strikes

President Donald Trump called out CNN and The New York Times for “fake news” on Wednesday about the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. 

“Great statements just came out from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and from, Iran, as you know, that it was complete total destruction,” Trump said Wednesday, speaking during the NATO Summit in The Netherlands about last weekend’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

“And, CNN turned out to be fake news,” Trump added. “As always. I swear they have no credibility. That’s why they have no viewers. But we’re going to read it to you if you haven’t seen it.” 

Trump said Saturday that the United States completed a “very successful” strike against Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, saying that Iran’s nuclear enrichment installations have been “obliterated.” 

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On Wednesday, CNN published an exclusive claiming the “US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.”

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says.” 

“A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings,” the piece reads. 

“The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded,” it adds. 

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Trump said Saturday that the United States completed a “very successful” strike against Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, saying that Iran’s nuclear enrichment installations have been “obliterated.”  ()

Trump called the media coverage “very unfair” to the mission’s pilots and added, “New York Times and CNN make up a phony story to get some hits. That’s the only reason I cared about it. Because those pilots were so brave. I’ve never seen anything like it. They flew into the hornet’s nest, and then they got hurt so badly by what the fake news wrote.” 

He criticized CNN and The New York Times by name, saying, “It was CNN. It was a New York Times and they’re both, disgusting, disgusting, really horrible groups of people. The pilots did an unbelievable job like nobody’s ever seen. They hit pay dirt, you see… Look, they go at the wound, you see where the wound is on the earth, and three of them right next to each other.” 

He also said that the pilots who performed the strikes should be “respected.”

CNN shot back at Trump’s criticisms on Wednesday, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer saying,”I speak as a former Pentagon correspondent and we appreciate, we love the men and women of the United States military who risk their lives to protect all of us, and we’re not criticizing them at all.”

Blitzer added the “only thing that we were doing was of course reporting what the Pentagon’s top intelligence agency, the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in their preliminary report about the damage that was assessed as a result of this mission.”

He also said that the pilots who performed the strikes on Iran should be “respected.” (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“Yesterday, President Trump called this ‘fake news,'” a New York Times spokesperson told Digital. “But he and his entire national security team subsequently confirmed that the Defense Intelligence Agency did in fact produce the preliminary assessment described in a report by The Times and others. So their statement was fake, not The Times’s reporting. We’ll continue to report fully on the administration’s decision-making, including the president’s dispute with the Defense Intelligence Agency, as we did this morning.”

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While Trump has asserted that the strikes on Iran destroyed its nuclear weapon-making capabilities, there are still questions about whether the ground-penetrating “bunker buster” bombs used to attack the key enrichment sites were enough to stop the rogue country from developing a nuclear bomb.

“I actually have a little bit of a rosier view on things,” Andrea Stricker, Deputy Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program, told Digital. “I think that because of the massive damage and the shock wave that would have been sent by 12 Massive Ordnance Penetrators at the Fordow site, that it likely would render its centrifuges damaged or inoperable.”

Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.