Secretary of War Pete Hegseth began his latest press conference on the war in the Middle East by rebuking the media’s coverage of the conflict and defending the administration’s battlefield strategy.
“I’ll start, as we often do here at the Department of War, with the bottom line up front for the world to hear and the press to actually admit — the United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military in a way the world has never seen before,” he said.
Not for the first time, the former Fox News host leveled criticisms at specific outlets, and directed his ire about television chyrons and headlines he believes are inaccurate.
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“People look up at the TV, and they see banners. They see headlines. I used to be in that business, and I know that everything is written intentionally. For example, a banner or a headline, Mid East war intensifies, splashing on the screen the last couple of days alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit, because that’s what they do. What should the banner read instead about Iran — increasingly desperate, because they are,” he contended.
Hegseth specifically rebutted CNN reporting that the administration “underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz,” calling it “patently ridiculous.”
His latest criticism comes after he accused the media of covering U.S. casualties in the war because the press wants to make Trump look bad.
“This is what the fake news misses,” he said earlier this month. “We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate, but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality, the terms of this war will be set by us at every step.”
Hegseth’s latest critiques came before he addressed the deaths of American service members who were killed in a KC-135 refueler aircraft crash on Thursday in Iraq. U.S. Central Command said four of the service members on board had been killed in the crash prior to the briefing, and confirmed the deaths of the other two on board shortly after it ended.
The secretary’s combative tone from the start of Friday’s briefing was in the ilk of his boss, President Donald Trump, who, himself, has sparred with the media since the war began. He was far from the only one, however, in the administration to attack the media’s coverage of the war on Friday.
“Secretary Hegseth is rightfully holding the fake news accountable for pushing false narratives about Operation Epic Fury. Here are the facts: Iranian ballistic missile attacks are down 90%, drone attacks are down 95%, 6,000 targets have been struck, 90 vessels are destroyed, and the United States and Israel have overwhelming air dominance over Iran. It’s shameful that the legacy media has focused more on carrying Iran’s water than recognizing the incredible accomplishments of our United States Military,” White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner.
A former Trump White House official told the Washington Examiner. “I think everything Secretary Hegseth does is at the direction of the president, so the attacks on the media — I wouldn’t say that he’s going rogue or anything like that. But how effective are they actually? I think we’ll have to wait and see.”
Sofia Kinzinger, who worked for former Vice President Mike Pence in the first Trump administration, was more direct in her analysis.
“Let me explain what happened after the press conference,” Kinzinger, the wife of former Republican congressman and Trump foe Adam Kinzinger, wrote on X. “A Pentagon comms staffer pulls the clip and sends it to Hegseth and his chief of staff so they can forward it to White House comms and Susie Wiles with a note: ‘We just destroyed CNN!’ — hoping it earns them a round of applause from the West Wing.
“This is what they live for. This is what drives the day, every day, in the Trump administration. In their ineptitude, moments like this feel like ‘controlling the message.’ The reality: it portrays an administration desperate to project control it clearly doesn’t have.”
The secretary, later in the briefing, deferred to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when asked about American casualties in the war. Neither of them provided an exact figure for the number of troops who have been wounded since the war began, though a CENTCOM spokesperson later told the Washington Examiner that there have been roughly 200 troops injured.
170 of the roughly 200 casualties have returned to duty, indicating their injuries were not that severe.
The president has suggested in recent days that the war is almost over and could end “soon,” yet Hegseth said Friday would mark the largest day of U.S. strikes by “almost by 20%.”
Trump said on Friday that he will end the war when he can “feel it in my bones,” and he said, “I don’t think it’s going to be long,” but he hasn’t identified a specific time frame for when the conflict could end since the early days of the war.
Hegseth, for his part, has said Trump will end the war when he feels U.S. troops have accomplished all of their goals, regardless of when that occurs.
