Donald Trump has unleashed a nasty attack on a CNN journalist who broke news of an intelligence leak about the Iran strikes, demanding that she be “thrown out like a dog”.
In his latest tirade since the leak made headlines, the president also revealed he has been watching the reporter, Natasha Bertrand, on CNN for days-even as he traversed the globe for the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
“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,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
ADVERTISEMENT
The meltdown was the latest salvo Trump has launched towards the media, ever since it began questioning whether US strikes on Iran’s three major nuclear enrichment facilities had been “obliterated,” as he has repeatedly claimed.
In another post, Trump wrote: “She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!”
But CNN clapped back on Wednesday, saying in a statement that the company stood “100% behind Bertrand’s journalism” and that of her colleagues.
“We do not believe it reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest,” said the statement, by CNN’s communications division.
Trump, who, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden does not own a presidential dog, has often used animalistic slurs to hit out at people.
Over the past few years, he has likened a long list of perceived enemies to dogs — including former FBI director James B. Comey, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and even his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was once a rival for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination.
But his latest tirade is emblematic of the fury within the White House over the leaked intelligence assessment, which suggested that the strikes against Iran this weekend only set Iran’s enrichment program back by six months and did not destroy its core components.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, and also reportedly found that the bombing sealed off the entrances to two of Iran’s three main nuclear facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was the first to reject the report, claiming it was leaked by a “low level loser” to undermine the president.
Rubio also weighed in, saying it was the work of “professional stabbers” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has launched an investigation into the leak, said it demeaned the work of US military fighters.
“If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel, and go really deep. Because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated,” a fuming Hegseth told reporters Wednesday, standing alongside Trump at the NATO summit.
Trump, meanwhile, said the findings of the report were “not complete” and that more information would paint the true picture of the battle damage caused over the weekend.
CNN also acknowledged that the findings were only preliminary. Nonetheless, the president’s personal attack against Bertrand demanded that she be fired and accused her of “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!”
