Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in full crybully mode during a Thursday news conference that, according to a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, was intended “to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots” and provide “interesting and irrefutable” evidence of the “LEGENDARY” success of last week’s unilateral U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But Hegseth didn’t provide definitive evidence of the actual extent of the damage inflicted on those facilities by 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — or clarity on whether Iran pre-emptively moved its stash of weapons-grade uranium. Instead, the secretary complained that certain media outlets failed to act as unquestioning cheerleaders of a stunning act of aggression against a longtime U.S. adversary — an attack that the president had immediately declared an unequivocal success.
The 42-minute press conference was a useful distillation of the Trump administration’s posture vis-à-vis news coverage: playing the pure-as-driven-snow victim while lashing out in fashion.
It is quite literally the job of reporters to ask the government for evidence to back up its claims.
Hegseth insisted the attack was successful in “decimating — choose your word — obliterating, destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” He blasted the press for reporting on a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which asserted that the U.S. attack may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months.
The secretary repeated the fact that the DIA’s initial assessment was of “low confidence” and insisted the reporting should have instead been about the awesomeness of the weapons and the bravery of the pilots who conducted the mission. I’m sure the weapons were awesome and the pilots were brave — and details of those tools of war and the risks of the mission were, in fact, reported widely in the mainstream press. But no matter which party is in power, it is quite literally the job of reporters to ask the government for evidence to back up its claims. And few details are more crucial to verify than those pertaining to military conflict.
That’s not how Hegseth, a former co-host of “Fox & Friends,” sees the media’s role in covering the Trump administration.
“How about we celebrate … how about we talk about how special America is that only we have these capabilities? I think it’s too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news,” Hegseth added. “We’re urging caution about pre-premising entire stories on biased leaks to biased publications trying to make something look bad. 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.”
But that’s the thing. We don’t know “what we accomplished.” That’s what journalists are asking the government, represented by Hegseth, to prove by sharing actionable evidence.
Hegseth even lashed out at his former colleague, longtime Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, for having the temerity to ask the defense secretary about satellite imagery that showed at least a dozen trucks at one of Iran’s nuclear facilities days before the attack.
“Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” the former daytime talk show host scolded the longtime hard-news reporter. Griffin retorted, “In fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy … so I take issue with that.”
Trump, long known to hire people based on their Fox News appearances, gave Hegseth high marks for his performance.
The president — a notorious anti-free speech ideologue — was on a press-hating tear of his own this week. He called for the firing of CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand, posting to Truth Social, “I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’” And the president also had his lawyer threaten to sue The New York Times and CNN for reporting on the DIA’s initial post-attack intelligence report. According to the Times, Trump’s lawyer wrote that the paper’s reporting “had damaged Mr. Trump’s reputation” and demanded a retraction and apology for “false,” “defamatory” and “unpatriotic” reporting. It doesn’t get much more “crybully” than the most powerful person in the world siccing his lawyer on news outlets whose reporting on a government document hurt his feelings. But there’s a lesson here for institutions, including universities, white shoe law firms and media corporations that continue to face Trump’s shakedown threats: Don’t give the schoolyard bully your lunch money in the hopes that he won’t demand it again. Don’t give the schoolyard bully your lunch money in the hopes that he won’t demand it again. The Times’ deputy general counsel, David E. McGraw, responded to Trump’s legal threat with a letter of his own, writing that it would be “irresponsible for a president to use the threat of litigation to silence a publication” for reporting on the government’s own intelligence that suggested “the President may have gotten it wrong in his initial remarks to the country.” “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so,” the letter concluded. That’s how you do it. Simply ignore being insulted as “unpatriotic” for asking questions to which the public deserves to know the answers. Don’t report on war as if it were a child’s game of heroes and villains and super-cool fireworks and explosions. Make the government prove its own claims. And do not agree to settlements when it comes to Trump’s bogus, anti-free speech lawsuit lawfare. Refuse to be bullied and all the bullies can do is cry more.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider. 
