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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lashed out at the media during a press conference on Friday, bemoaning headlines he disliked and demanding that a more “patriotic press” cover the U.S.’s expanding war on Iran.
During the presser, Hegseth, a former cable news personality on Fox News, appeared rattled over reporting that suggested the Trump administration was mismanaging the unauthorized war.
“Some in the press can’t stop. People look up at the TV and they see banners, headlines,” Hegseth said in one of his complaints, claiming that headlines putting the administration in a bad light were “written intentionally.”
“For example: ‘Mideast War Intensifies,’ splashing on the screen. … What should the banner read instead? How about, ‘Iran increasingly desperate,'” Hegseth said.
“They know it, and so do you,” he added, seemingly directing his ire toward journalists in the room.
“Another example of a ‘fake’ headline I saw yesterday: ‘War Widening,'” Hegseth said. “Here’s a real headline for you, for an actual, patriotic press. How about: ‘Iran Shrinking, Going Underground.’”
The defense secretary then claimed that Iran’s leaders are “cowering,” comparing them to burrowing “rats.”
In truth, recent video from Iran shows that its leaders are not hiding underground. One video showed the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, taking part in a Quds Day march in Tehran on Friday.
Hegseth also directed his attention to CNN specifically, deriding a recent report from the news agency suggesting that the administration hadn’t properly prepared for the effects the war would have on shipping within the Strait of Hormuz.
“CNN doesn’t think we thought of that,” Hegseth whined. “It’s a fundamentally unserious report.”
“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth added, referring to the proposed takeover of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance. The Ellison family, particularly David’s multibillionaire father Larry Ellison, are close Trump allies.
“As the world is seeing, they are exercising sheer desperation in the Straits of Hormuz, something we’re dealing with. We have been dealing with it and don’t need to worry about it,” Hegseth added.
The CNN article that Hegseth alluded to, however, cites “multiple sources” familiar with the administration’s war planning, reporting that the White House “failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration,” particularly the economic effects of the war on Iran and conflicts in the Strait of Hormuz.
The CNN piece also asked a former U.S. official who had worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations about the apparent widening of the war to the strait, and the administration’s lack of precautions to prevent that outcome.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of U.S. national security policy for decades. I’m dumbfounded,” that official said.
Several critics pushed back against Hegseth’s demands for a more “patriotic press” to cover the war to his liking.
“A critical press is the most patriotic press one can have,” University of South Carolina political science professor David Darmofal wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Hegseth would understand that if he understood America and our form of government.”
“Hegseth and his bosses want a pliant media serving their interests under their control, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve shut out publications that refuse to bend the knee or produce fawning coverage,” The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid wrote in a column on Friday.
“The argument for a ‘patriotic press’ that Hegseth is making “concerns narrative control, not factual accuracy,” wrote Colby Hall, founding editor of Mediaite.
“The public would still see the war on their screens. What they would lose is the independent reporting that helps them understand what the war actually means,” Hall added.
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