Senator accuses Trump of ‘deliberately misleading’ public on Iran strikes
Following leaks that suggested Operation Midnight Hammer was not as successful as intended, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy accused the Trump administration of “misleading” the public.
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It comes as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has rallied against the press for continually undermining Trump.
The comments come as senators and the press were both briefed on the Iran strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, by top Trump officials on Thursday.
A joint press conference was held in the morning at the Pentagon, hosted by Fox News anchor turned Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Dan Caine, the US military’s most senior officer.
A classified senators’ briefing was then held in the evening, hosted by Hegseth, Caine, State Secretary Marc Rubio and CIA Director Jon Ratcliffe.
The morning press conference came amid leaks from the Defence Department on Wednesday, in which several major US news outlets were told the strikes may have only set Iran’s nuclear programme back by “a few months”.
One anonymous source told NBC News: "We were assuming that the damage was going to be much more significant than this assessment is finding”.
Hegseth took aim at the press in the morning conference, saying they were responsible for spreading “fake news” by “cheering against Trump”, and, therefore undermining “the efficacy of these strikes”.
"It's like, in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump,” Hegseth said in the conference.
“Because you want him not to be successful, so bad. You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes."
However, following the classified senators’ briefing later in the evening, some senators have echoed concerns that the strikes may not have been as effective as stated.
"There's no doubt there was damage done to the programme,” Chris Murphy, the junior Democratic senator for Connecticut, has said coming out of the meeting.
“But the allegations that we have ‘obliterated’ their programme just don't seem to stand up to reason”.
"It still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear programme by a handful of months,” he said.
"I walk away from that briefing still under the belief that we have not obliterated the programmes. The President was deliberately misleading the public when he said the programme was ‘obliterated’."
Other senators have also echoed fears of exaggeration. Richard Blumenthal, the senior Democratic senator for Connecticut, described the word “obliterated” as “much too strong”.
The Trump administration is yet to respond to the Connecticut senators’ comments - but they did describe the Defence Department leaks as “flat-out wrong”, and propagated by “low-level losers”.
"This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as 'top secret' but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday.
"The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear programme."
“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000lb bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration."