Trump wants CNN reporter fired ‘like a dog’ for debunking Iran strike claims
Wednesday, 25 June 2025 10:53 PM
[ Last Update: Wednesday, 25 June 2025 10:53 PM ]
US President Donald Trump has launched a fiery tirade against a CNN reporter for debunking his unsubstantiated claims about the so-called "obliteration" of Iran's nuclear sites following American strikes, while the network has stood by her.
Natasha Bertrand’s reporting, co-authored with Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, had cited a leaked preliminary assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which found that the Sunday attacks caused only minimal damage to the facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
The report also noted that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile remains intact despite Trump claiming that the country’s nuclear program was finished.
Fuming over the leak, Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, saying that Bertrand should be fired by CNN management.
“She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’”
He accused her of lying, disrespecting American pilots, and lacking the ability to be an on-camera correspondent, besides calling CNN a "fake news network."
CNN, however, responded with a statement of support for their reporter, saying it "stands 100% behind Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting.”
The network added that it was in the public interest to report the findings and that it had also covered Trump’s own skepticism concerning the assessment.
Senior CNN anchors Pamela Brown and Wolf Blitzer also pushed back, calling Trump’s claims about Bertrand and the network “absolutely false” and a “straw man argument.”
Brown emphasized that the reporting did not demean the military but accurately reflected early Pentagon assessments.
Meanwhile, the White House rejected the leaked assessment and attacked the unnamed source behind it. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the intelligence report “flat-out wrong” and claimed it had been leaked by a “low-level loser."
Despite the DIA's findings, the Israeli regime, the US's closest ally in the West Asia region, which launched a 12-day war of its own against the Islamic Republic earlier this month, backed Trump’s assertion.
Tel Aviv claimed the US and Israeli strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program “by many years.”
Experts and satellite imagery analysts have shown that the Islamic Republic’s underground facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan remained largely operational.
Tehran, itself, has dismissed claims of "obliteration" of its nuclear sites and vowed to continue expanding its peaceful nuclear energy program robustly.
“They cannot uproot it,” Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Tuesday, underlining the profoundly strong nature of the country's nuclear industry.
CNN report, citing the leaked assessment findings, said Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile remains intact, with one source noting that the centrifuges targeted in the attacks suffered little damage.
Damage across all three targeted facilities, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, was primarily limited to aboveground structures, including power systems and facilities used in converting uranium to weapons-grade metal, the CNN cited sources as saying.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told CNN that commercial satellite imagery of the nuclear sites supports the assessment that Iran’s program remains largely intact.
“The ceasefire came without either Israel or the United States being able to destroy several key underground nuclear facilities, including near Natanz, Isfahan, and Parchin,” Lewis said.
“These facilities could serve as the basis for the rapid reconstitution of Iran’s nuclear program,” he added.