Trump demands CNN fire reporter for Iran nuclear damage report story
US president says Natasha Bertrand 'attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad'
US President Donald Trump
WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded that CNN fire correspondent Natasha Bertrand for an Iran nuclear damage report.
"Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out 'like a dog'," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The report said US intelligence concluded that the weekend airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities did not destroy the fundamental structure of Iran's nuclear program, likely setting it back by only months.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei confirmed to Al Jazeera that the facilities had been "badly damaged" in the American strikes.
Trump said Bertrand was "attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad."
"She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!" he added.
Trump, on the sidelines of a NATO summit at The Hague earlier Wednesday, repeated his claim that Iran's nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan were "totally demolished" in the strikes.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the FBI started a probe into how a preliminary intelligence assessment about the US military strikes in Iran became public.
"We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now, because this information is for internal purposes," Hegseth told reporters in The Hague.
"If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran's nuclear program is obliterated,” he said at Trump's news conference after the summit.
CNN defended Bertrand after Trump posted on social media.
"We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities," it said.
