US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) listens as US President Donald Trump addresses a press conference during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague on June 25, 2025. (Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images)
"I just want to thank our pilots," Trump said. "You know, they were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news CNN, which is back there, believe it or not, wasting time, wasting time. Nobody's watching them. So they just wasted a lot of time. wasting my time. And the New York Times, they put out a story that, 'well, maybe they were hit, but it wasn't so bad that they ended the war.'"
The president added that he received a call that the pilots who deployed from Missouri to Iran for the strikes were "devastated" due to certain media outlets attempting to downplay the success of the mission.
"Do you know, I got a call from Missouri? Great state that I won three times by a lot. And I got a call that the pilots and people on the plane were devastated because (the media) were trying to minimize the attack. And they all said it was hit, ’but oh, but we don't think it was really maybe hit that badly.' And they were devastated," he said.
"They put their lives on the line and then they have, and I'm not referring to you, but real scum. Real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be," Trump continued.
TRUMP ADDRESSES NATION ON 'SPECTACULAR MILITARY SUCCESS' OF US STRIKES ON IRANIAN NUCLEAR FACILITIES
US Vice President JD Vance, from left, US President Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defense, during an address to the nation in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, June 21, 2025. (Carlos Barria/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America. Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs," Trump said in his address Saturday with the trio standing behind him. "That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate, in particular."
MISDIRECTION AND 'DECEPTION' LIKELY KEY IN TRUMP ADMIN’S SURPRISE IRAN STRIKE
"Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated," Trump said. "And Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier."
President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte attend a plenary session at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, om June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
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"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," Leavitt posted to X on Tuesday of the CNN report. "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 program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-hegseth-seethe-fake-news-media-doubting-us-strikes-obliterated-iranian-nuclear-sites-scum