Pete Hegseth Is Mad the Media Won’t Celebrate U.S. War With Iran

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had a meltdown on Thursday during a Pentagon press conference excoriating reporters for failing to act as cheerleaders for his boss President Donald Trump In a briefing about U S strikes on Iran Hegseth criticized the press for not following the Pentagon line and called on journalists to wave an American flag His statements harken back to past Pentagon calls for fawning coverage in the name of patriotism The press corps Hegseth complained cheer against Trump so hard it s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be accomplished so bad Hegseth s tantrum stemmed from reporting that cast doubt on Trump s assertion that modern U S air strikes had obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities last Saturday The Intercept published on skepticism about Trump s declares by current and former defense bureaucrats on Monday On Tuesday multiple media outlets disclosed information from a preliminary classified Defense Intelligence Agency or DIA document that announced the attacks set back Iran s nuclear activity by only a meager months You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes You have to hope Hegseth reported at his second-ever news conference claiming that the media assembled half truths spun information leaked information to manipulate the general mind over whether or not our brave pilots were accomplished Before and after Hegseth s atomic meltdown on Thursday Trump unleashed a paroxysm of posts on Truth Social FAKE NEWS CNN IS SO DISGUSTING AND INCOMPETENT SPECIFIC OF THE DUMBEST ANCHORS IN THE BUSINESS he shout-typed Rumor is that the Failing New York Times and Fake News CNN will be firing the reporters who made up the FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong Lets see what happens It remains unclear whether the U S strikes significantly damaged Iran s nuclear venture which according to American intelligence organizations did not involve an working effort to produce a nuclear weapon To me it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear plan by a handful of months Sen Chris Murphy D-Conn commented following a classified briefing on Thursday There s no doubt there was damage done to the venture But the accusations that we have obliterated their project just don t seem to stand up to reason Complaints by the White House about the press during unpopular wars have a long history As TV news increasingly evidenced the Vietnam War to be an intractable stalemate if not an outright failure President Lyndon Johnson complained about their coverage I can prove that Ho Chi Minh is a son-of-a-bitch if you let me put it on the screen he described a group of reporters referring to the leader of North Vietnam but mentioned that the networks want me to be the son-of-a-bitch His successor Richard Nixon was even more vitriolic about coverage of the war and more succinct in his criticism Our worst enemy seems to be the press he barked in In CBS News sent Morley Safer to Vietnam to cover the escalating American war In July Marines entered the village of Cam Ne and met stiff resistance suffering three dead and four wounded The next month with Safer and a cameraman in tow the troops set out for the area in armored vehicles Safer recalled The troops walked abreast toward this village and started firing They mentioned that there was chosen incoming fire I didn t witness it but it was a fairly large front so it could have happened down the line There were two guys wounded in our group both in the ass so that meant it was friendly fire They moved into the village and they systematically began torching every house every house as far as I could see getting people out in specific cases using flamethrowers in others No Vietnamese speakers by the way were among the group with the flamethrower About homes in Cam Ne were burned others were bulldozed as Marines razed two entire hamlets Artillery was then called in on the wreckage According to reports one child was killed and four women were wounded In actuality plenty of more may have died Safer s segment The Burning of Cam Ne Village sparked society outrage Related U S Blamed the Press for Military Looting in Cambodia The Defense Department demanded CBS recall Safer from Vietnam and Johnson called CBS President Frank Stanton Are you trying to fuck me the U S president barked Who is this Stanton petitioned according to reporting by David Halberstam and others Johnson replied Frank this is your president and the last evening your boys shat on the American flag A year later Safer wrote a newspaper column about a visit to Saigon by Arthur Sylvester the assistant secretary of defense for citizens affairs Per Safer Sylvester laid into the press I can t understand how you fellows can write what you do while American boys are dying out here he began Then he went on to the effect that American correspondents had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good A structure television correspondent announced Surely Arthur you don t expect the American press to be the handmaidens of regime That s exactly what I expect came the reply Sylvester also notified the reporters Look if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth then you re stupid Did you hear that Stupid Sylvester later denied the handmaiden comment but others present backed Safer Sylvester engaged specific correspondents in near name-calling twice telling Jack Langguth of The New York Times he was stupid another attendee noted At one point Sylvester certainly made the announcement he thought press should be handmaiden of cabinet In his press conference Hegseth called on journalists to publish stories lauding troops for doing their jobs asking rhetorically if outlets had written on the difficulty of flying a plane for hours manning a Patriot missile battery or executing mid-air refueling Time and time again classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad And what s really happening is you re undermining the success of incredible B- pilots and incredible F- pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplish their mission he groused How about we celebrate that Related The Trump DOJ Loved Leaking as Long as It Was to Rupert Murdoch s Newspapers Premising entire stories on biased leaks to biased publications trying to make something look bad Hegseth a former Fox News personality griped How about we take a beat recognize first the success of our warriors hold them up tell their stories celebrate that wave an American flag be proud of what we accomplished The Intercept followed up with the Pentagon to ask if Hegseth would help facilitate this type of reporting A Pentagon spokesperson instead offered the opportunity to speak with Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson off the record When The Intercept called to set up a time to speak with Wilson a Pentagon spokesperson refused to do so Kingsley will reach out to you if she s got anything to provide you disclosed the official I would just stand by That s the best thing I can offer you right now The Office of the Secretary of Defense refused to provide further clarification about Hegseth s views on the role of the press and how the media ought to cover him the president and the military We have nothing more to provide a spokesperson commented after providing nothing Related U S Intel Says Iran Isn t a Nuclear Threat Israel Wants the U S to Bomb It Anyway Hegseth is notably calling on the press to celebrate a war which Americans are overwhelmingly against Americans disapprove of the strikes on Iran percent to percent according to a CNN SSRS poll conducted after the strikes An even greater number distrust Trump s decision-making on the use of force in Iran with percent saying the strikes will make Iran more of a threat to the U S and only percent believing the attacks will lessen the threat A Quinnipiac University poll circulated Thursday revealed only percent of Americans approve of Trump s handling on the Israel Iran war while percent disapprove Hegseth s antagonism toward the news media began well before Thursday s press conference Since his appointment he has conducted a war on whistleblowers despite the fact that he inadvertently shared detailed attack plans of far more import than the DIA record because they preceded military strikes with a journalist on a messaging app Hegseth has reportedly accused high-ranking military officers of leaks and threatened to subject them to polygraph tests Joe Kasper Hegseth s former chief of staff called out unauthorized disclosures of national precaution information involving sensitive communications with principals within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and threatened that parties exposed responsible would be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution in a March memo Speaking in April with quasi-journalist Megyn Kelly another former Fox News host ex-Hegseth aide Colin Carroll revealed that the secretary and his company have been consumed by his leaky Department of Defense If you look at a pie chart of the secretary s day at this point percent of it is seemingly a leak study Carroll noted The FBI is now examining how the DIA document became community We are doing a leak assessment with the FBI now because this information is for internal purposes battle damage study and CNN and others are trying to spin it to try and make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success Hegseth described reporters At his Thursday press conference Hegseth urged the media to do more to herald American exceptionalism at least in terms of military prowess How about we talk about how special America is that we only we have these capabilities I think it s too much to ask unfortunately for the fake news noted Hegseth in aggrieved tones So we re used to that but we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what s really happening The post Pete Hegseth Is Mad the Media Won t Celebrate U S War With Iran appeared first on The Intercept