Since the U.S. strikes against key Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend were declared a success by the Trump administration, the media has seemingly been working overtime to undermine the assertion.
Chief among them? CNN Pentagon correspondent Natasha Bertrand, who has a long history of dubious intel reporting dating back to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and Russiagate hoax. She had a byline on an “exclusive” CNN report published Wednesday citing unnamed Pentagon sources who claimed “an early U.S. intelligence assessment” found the bombing campaign “did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.”
What Bertrand and CNN failed to mention in the report is that the leaked document from the Defense Intelligence Agency was a preliminary assessment with low confidence, meaning the conclusions will likely change.
President Donald Trump and other White House officials wasted no time calling out the reporter and the network for the claims, but that hasn’t stopped the likes of CNN Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper from defending them in stunning fashion.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by the hosts of Ruthless – Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook – to discuss the problematic reporting in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer and Tapper’s hypocrisy.
Tapper’s Lecture
Fresh off his media tour for his bombshell book Original Sin about the cover-up surrounding former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the media’s role in it, Tapper delivered a 10-minute monologue during his CNN show Wednesday calling out the Trump administration for calling out his network and Bertrand.
He accused the Trump White House of “shooting the messengers in an increasingly ugly way” and claimed the role of the media is to question authority and dig for facts at all times. “We don’t know yet whether this administration is accurately portraying what happened in Iran or not. We don’t know,” he said. “That’s the point of publishing what we know that the government learns once we learn.”
Using a standard that was certainly not in play during the Biden era, Tapper went on to opine about the role of journalists. “The lesson’s there: The news media needs to press for facts, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if – as Americans and as humans – there is a personal instinct to rally around the flag,” he continued. “Asking questions is literally our job, demanding facts and answers instead of just taking a president’s word for it.”
According to Tapper, that is a patriotic act. “History has taught us that the most pro-service member action we can take is to ask questions of our leaders, especially in times of war,” he added. “That, for journalists, is the height of patriotism.”
Megyn was seemingly in need of some ibuprofen after listening to the lecture. “My head hurts,” she quipped. “We have the obligation to ask questions of our presidents and not just take their word? We know!”
Ashbrook said the defense and advice would be easier to swallow if Tapper and CNN had not just “spent four years covering for an invalid” and if Bertrand didn’t have such a problematic history of, in Megyn’s words, being “the best stenographer for Deep State-type intel operatives.”
Media Malpractice
From the original reporting to the defense, Megyn said the situation is a disservice to whatever audience CNN has left. “What you have is Jake Tapper trying to spin this as some glorious, noble effort at reporting by leaking a preliminary, low confidence report, which [Bertrand] did not tell the audience was low confidence in her initial reporting,” she noted. “Neither CNN nor The New York Times thought that would be relevant at all.”
As former Fox News and CBS News intel reporter Catherine Herridge explained on X, such a report “would not carry much weight” to anyone who knew anything. “Her explanation of how a normal, schooled Pentagon or intel reporter would receive such a leak is they would be like, ‘This is not worth the paper it’s printed on,'” Megyn added.
Rather than take responsibility for reporting or, at a bare minimum, properly identify it as “low confidence” and “preliminary,” Megyn said the media has attempted to paint the work as skeptical, good faith reporting.
“When Pete Hegseth comes out and says, ‘Just stop. That was low confidence, and it was preliminary,’ all their instincts are, ‘We’re being lied to. We’re being spun’; as opposed to, what if he is telling the truth,” she explained. “What if… DNI Tulsi Gabbard… and CIA’s John Ratcliffe… and the IAEA guy [Rafael Grossi] saying… the centrifuges are no longer operational… what if they’re telling us the truth? What if they are not all engaged in a massive cover-up operation, but our pilots actually did get it done? How is it you can’t even allow for that?”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ruthless by tuning in to episode 1,096 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.