Donald Trump lost his cool on Wednesday after reports revealed that his major bombing operation in Iran may not have done the damage he claimed.
Speaking at the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump angrily attacked the press and his intelligence community for leaking a classified report. The report said Iran’s nuclear program was likely only delayed by a few months, not “obliterated” as Trump claimed. “CNN is scum, MSDNC is scum, the New York Times is scum,” Trump shouted. “They’re bad people. They’re sick.”
He accused the media of trying to ruin what he called one of the most successful military strikes in U.S. history. “They’ve tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less,” Trump said. “The generals and all of the people who did a good job, they get demeaned by these idiots at CNN.”
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Earlier, both CNN and the New York Times reported on leaked intel showing that Trump’s “Midnight Hammer” operation had failed to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program. The strike hit three sites—Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan—but according to the report, Iran could rebuild in a few months.
This was not what Trump promised when he announced the airstrikes over the weekend.
“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!” he posted on Truth Social, blasting the media for trying to downplay the mission.
Yet on Wednesday, he quietly admitted the report might be true.
“The intelligence was very inconclusive,” Trump told reporters. “It could have been very severe. So I guess that’s correct.”
But just minutes later, he changed course again. “We don’t know… it was very severe, it was obliteration,” Trump claimed. “It knocked them for a loop.”
Despite the confusion, Trump still insisted that his actions led to peace between Iran and Israel. He said the bombing forced both sides to accept a ceasefire, though he later accused them of breaking the deal hours after announcing it. “This was a devastating attack,” Trump said. “And you know, if it didn’t, they wouldn’t have settled.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed up Trump and called the leaks a political move.
“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target—and worked perfectly,” Hegseth said in a statement.
“The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
He also confirmed that the FBI is investigating the leak.
The attack on Iran involved both submarine-launched missiles and B-2 bombers carrying massive 30,000-pound bunker bombs. These are the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
While Trump compared the strikes to the end of World War 2, saying, “I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki,” critics now question whether the mission achieved anything at all.
Featured image via Screengrab
