Trump, Hegseth team up to take on NBC News reporter pressing them about leaked Iran report

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired back at NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell on Wednesday as she attempted to question them on reports that the Iranian nuclear sites were not “obliterated.”

An early assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which was leaked to CNN, found that the damage done to Iran’s nuclear facilities likely only set back the Iranians’ nuclear program by a few months, which contradicted Trump’s claim that the sites were “completely obliterated.” While O’Donnell repeatedly asked about the report, Trump said the DIA report is incomplete and does not properly assess the damages caused by the U.S.’ bombings on Saturday night.

“You talked about having some on-the-ground assessments at Fordow and other sites … What is your message then, sir, to the intelligence community when they present reports?” O’Donnell asked.

“[The DIA] presented a report that wasn’t finished. We’re talking about something that took place three days ago. The report was done days ago,” Trump said, with O’Donnell attempting to push back. “Wait a minute, they didn’t see it. All they can do is take a guess. Now if you take a look at the pictures, if you take a look at how it’s all blackened. You know the fire and brimstone is all underground because it’s granite and it’s all underground. You don’t show it. But even there, with all of that being said, the whole area for 75 yards around, the hole where it hit is black with fire … It’s been obliterated, totally obliterated.”

WATCH:

Trump then accused the media, including O’Donnell, of immediately jumping to conclusions in the early stages of the assessment.

“It could be severe or maybe it’s not. So people like you pick it up and say ‘oh, it’s not severe.’ No, the report was not a complete report. Yet the message was probably more wait till you know the answer,” Trump continued.

Hegseth then called out the corporate press for attempting to “spin” the administration’s attack on Iran in an attempt to “hurt” Trump.

“There’s a reason that the president calls out fake news for what it is,” Hegseth told O’Donnell. “These pilots, these re-fuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into any territory for 36 hours on behalf of the American people and the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom. And then 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 reason to try to hurt President Trump or our country. They don’t care what the troops think, they don’t care what the world thinks. They want to spin it to try to make him look bad based on a leak.”

The president returned to the podium and told O’Donnell to be “proud” of the B-2 pilots who dropped the bombs on the nuclear sites. The administration maintains that the sites were “completely obliterated” by the bombings.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the leakage of the “assessment” was “flat-out wrong” and an attempt to “demean” Trump and the pilots who carried out the mission.

Trump told reporters on Tuesday that outlets like CNN and MSNBC are “gutless losers” who owed the pilots an apology for its reporting on the bombings. Both outlets downplayed the success of the bombings’ outcomes and suggested that  the attack was an “incomplete strike.”

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