If you had your TV turned on this past Wednesday morning, you might have gotten an eyeful and an earful from a furious Secretary of Defense. His rage was understandable in some ways: the mainstream media had once again misrepresented the findings of a report on the bunker buster bomb results in Iran, and he wanted them to know how irresponsible their reports were, and their motives in discrediting the bombs was obvious.

Hegseth pointed out, first, that the report was a preliminary assessment, meaning it lacked the usual coordination and verification to be considered conclusive intelligence:

The defense secretary minimized the importance of a preliminary intelligence assessment that concluded U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities had damaged but not permanently destroyed them.

Hegseth scolded the media for ‘breathlessly’ focusing on an assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency even though the DIA is part of the Defense Department.

He said the assessment was preliminary and had not been coordinated with other agencies in the intelligence community. He said other intelligence assessments have been more bullish in their assessments on damage of the sites.

As BBC reports, “Battle damage assessments take time,” but many media organizations, rather than emphasizing the “preliminary” and “early reporting” aspect of the intel which of course means limited information, chose to focus instead on the potentially detrimental results of those reports—that is, the possibility that the damage had not been as significant as Trump and his administration portrayed.

The media agenda was clear: they wanted to discount these historic moments and the incredible performance of those involved with the dropping of the bombs, all because they want to discredit President Trump.

Hegseth emphasized the motives of the leaker at DIA:

He also claimed the DIA report was revealed as ‘someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn’t successful.’

‘I hope, with all the ink spilled, all of your outlets find the time to properly recognize this historic change in continental security that other presidents tried to do, other presidents talked about,’ Hegseth said. ‘President Trump accomplished it. It’s a huge deal.’

But even more was at stake than the leaked information and attacking the president:

Trump administration officials know it doesn’t take long for public opinion in a major event like this to harden. If American voters conclude now that the US attacks weren’t effective, it will be hard for the White House to change minds weeks or months later.

Hegseth’s early morning briefing was an attempt to wrest back a narrative derailed by the preliminary defence intelligence report.

If it were in my power, I would strongly encourage Sec. Hegseth to have regular press conferences on the big-ticket items and list all the lies and misrepresentations that the media had printed, and follow them with the truth. Period. And the secretary himself should lead the conferences, from wherever he might be—not some Pentagon spokesperson. It shouldn’t take long to do these things. He could even encourage the media to let him know when they do publish the truth.

It’s time to take the war to the media.

Image: Public domain.