'Shooting the messengers': Trump tears into media over Iran report
President Donald Trump has escalated his longstanding assault on the mainstream media, denigrating individual reporters and threatening legal action against major outlets over their coverage this week of US military strikes on Iran.
Trump has staked significant political capital on the success of last weekend's strikes, which he ordered despite criticism within his own support base for breaking his campaign promises to avoid foreign military interventions.
The president has blasted press coverage of a preliminary classified report from his own administration that suggested that Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear facilities were "obliterated" was overstated.
The unusually scathing attack on reporters underscores what many observers view as Trump's effort to put the media -- already battling record low public trust -- on the defensive and stifle scrutiny of the bombing raid.
"Having made the decision to join the fight against Iran, being able to claim that the intervention was brief and successful has obvious political upside for Trump in repairing rifts within his coalition," Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.
"The discussion by the media of the preliminary intelligence report therefore complicated the president's preferred narrative about the US attack."
The preliminary intelligence assessment, first reported by CNN and The New York Times, then picked up by other mainstream media, suggested that the strikes may not have destroyed the core parts of the nuclear sites and had set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months.
Trump said CNN should throw the reporter on the story out "like a dog." He said CNN and New York Times reporters were "bad and sick people" attempting to demean American pilots involved in the strikes.
At a televised news conference on Thursday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth reiterated the president's complaints and pushed back on the findings of the report -- issued by the US Defense Intelligence Agency –- but did not deny its existence.
- 'Increasingly ugly' -
Both news outlets have stood behind their journalists and defended their reporting.
"President Trump and his administration are going after shooting the messengers in an increasingly ugly way," said CNN's top political anchor Jake Tapper.
"They're calling journalists 'fake news' for true stories," he added.
Trump has also threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN over their coverage of the intelligence report.
In a letter, the president's personal lawyer said the New York Times had damaged Trump's reputation and demanded that it "retract and apologize" for its report, calling it "false," "defamatory" and "unpatriotic," according to the newspaper.
The newspaper said it had rejected those demands.
"Trump is killing the messenger," Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, told AFP.
"He's taking it out on the press because he knows that the press are unpopular," particularly among his core Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, he said.
"Additionally, he and others in the administration are using the attack line of patriotism to bolster their side against the press."
- 'Peace through strength' -
The anti-media rhetoric escalates Trump's longstanding battle with the press.
Since the beginning of his second term, his administration has sought to target the finances of media organizations -- already struggling in an increasingly tough commercial climate -- by cutting government agencies' news subscriptions.
He has also targeted news outlets with multi-million dollar lawsuits.
Trump's latest attacks come amid a public relations campaign to portray himself as a peacemaker in the Middle East, while retaining the support of his core MAGA base.
On Friday, Trump doubled down on his stance, stating that Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "got beat to hell" in the hostilities involving the United States and Israel, while exhorting Tehran to return to the negotiating table.
"If his 'peace through strength' single attack didn't work and the conflict gets drawn out, this undermines his claim as a peacemaker," said Belt.
"If the public believes the single strike didn't work, then he will either have to attack again or negotiate from a position that recognizes that Iran still maintains fissile material, which may not work."
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