Flying into a tantrum on the White House lawn Tuesday morning, Donald Trump seethed at the mainstream media for reporting that Iran’s nuclear program may in fact not be completely “destroyed” following this past weekend’s “Operation Midnight Hammer” bombing raid.
“CNN is scum and so is MSDNC,” the president fumed, invoking his favorite insult for MSNBC. “They‘re all! And frankly, the networks aren’t much better. It’s all fake news!”
Yet another one of the president’s anti-media tirades came as he was visibly angry that the “complete and total” ceasefire he announced just the night before between Iran and Israel had already been broken, prompting him to profanely blast the two countries for violating the truce.
“Iran violated it, but Israel violated it too,” he groused. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen.”
Adding that he was “really unhappy with Israel” and “not happy with Iran either,” the president wrapped up his rant by raging at both warring nations. “You know what? We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing, do you understand that?!” Trump grumbled before stomping off to his helicopter.
Trump was departing the White House on Tuesday to head to the Netherlands, where he will participate in a NATO summit at The Hague, where the conflict between Iran and Israel – and America’s direct involvement in it – will undoubtedly be a significant topic of discussion.
Meanwhile, before tossing his international f-bombs, Trump devoted much of his energy on Tuesday morning to raging about cable news’ coverage of the American airstrikes on three underground nuclear facilities, which the president had described as a “spectacular military success” that “completely and totally obliterated” the nation’s nuclear program.
Despite the president’s boasts, experts have said that the attack – which featured several B-2 bombers dropping over a dozen bunker-busting bombs – did not destroy Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and may have actually emboldened the country to build a bomb.
CNN reported that even if the Fordow underground site was destroyed, which analysts say would be a “tall order,” most of Iran’s already-enriched uranium was stored in Ishafan – a facility that was not hit by the B-2 bombers but instead targeted by Tomahawk missiles. “This is an incomplete strike. If this is all there is, here’s what left: the entire stockpile of 60% uranium, which was stored at Isfahan in tunnels that are untouched,” one weapons expert told CNN.
With CNN and other networks expressing skepticism over the president’s claims about the effectiveness of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Trump lashed out when asked on the White House lawn how confident he was that Iran’s nuclear program had been devastated.
“I think it‘s been completely demolished. I think the reason we‘re here is because those pilots, those B-2 pilots, did an unbelievable job,” he responded. “And, you know, the fake news – like CNN in particular – they‘re trying to say, ‘Well, I agree that it was destroyed, but maybe not that destroyed.’ You know what they‘re doing. They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line.”
After calling CNN and MSNBC “scum,” the president then accused the networks of descerating the honor of both him and the military personnel who took part in the weekend bombing raid.
“Those pilots hit their targets,” Trump complained. “Those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit. They‘re not after the pilots; they're after me. They want to try and demean me.”
Insisting that Iran “will never rebuild its nuclear from there,” referring to the Fordow facility, the president continued to praise the B-2 pilots before grumbling some more about the “fake news” and its coverage of the crisis.
“I think CNN ought to apologize to the pilots of the B-2s. I think that MSDNC ought to apologize. I think these guys, really these networks and these cable networks, are real losers. You really are. You‘re real losers!” Trump exclaimed.
“You‘re gutless losers. I say that to CNN because I watch it. I have no choice. I got to watch that garbage. It‘s all garbage. It‘s all fake news,” he added. “But I think CNN is a gutless group of people. And the people that run it, nobody even knows. It‘s been sold so many times. But the people that run it, ought to be ashamed.”
Trump’s ragefest about cable news being nasty to him and his administration comes after he took to his social media platform to make similar complaints about the coverage the airstrikes had received from the mainstream press, which featured him name-checking several anchors and network executives.
“The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week. “Only the Fake News would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible — And even they say they were ‘pretty well destroyed!’”
“Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN,” he added, taking a homophobic swipe at CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “Dumb Brian L. Roberts, Chairman of ‘Con’cast, Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News, and always, the Losers of, again, Concast’s NBC Fake News. It never ends with the sleazebags in the Media, and that’s why their Ratings are at an ALL TIME LOW — ZERO CREDIBILITY!”
The president, of course, has made attacks on the mainstream media a feature of his presidency. While he’s currently suing CBS News over a Kamala Harris interview and threatening legal action against other news organizations, which has seen his handpicked FCC chairman launch several investigations, Trump has also regularly lashed out at CNN and MSNBC.
Last month, for instance, the president raged at “highly neurotic” MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle for saying the president was looking to back away from his “Liberation Day” tariffs because of a potential recession. The president claimed that MSNBC had committed a “Major Campaign Violation” and was “nothing less than an arm of the Democrat National Committee
