The Media Research Center’s third day of complaining that a CNN report on President Trump’s airstrikes on Iran didn’t follow the right-wing narrative continued in a June 27 post by intern Ashley Taylor:
Once again, the liberal ladies of The View have proven that they were more interested in pushing anti-Trump hysteria than engaging in honest political discourse. On Thursday’s show, the ABC daytime panel went beyond their usual whining and delved headfirst into conspiracy theory territory, suggesting that President Trump’s statements about the success of the U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and calling out CNN for false reporting, was evidence that he wants to impose state-run media, like China and Russia.
Yes, seriously.
Sunny Hostin actually claimed that Trump’s insistence on the success of the June 22 precision strikes against Iranian nuclear sites was an “attack on the free press” and reflected his preference for “state-sponsored television” like in communist China and Russia.
This wasn’t just an opinion, its reckless rhetoric being framed as facts, comparing the President of the United States to authoritarian despots because he stood by a military mission deemed successful by both the Pentagon and international organizations.
Taylor then went into Trump Regime Media mode:
What they refused to acknowledge was that the operation was not only successful but also strategically sound. China and Russia, two of Iran’s traditional allies, remained silent. We avoided a larger conflict. There were no civilian casualties. And yes, Iran’s nuclear facilities are, by all meaningful measures, offline.
Alex Christy grumbled that the attacks on the CNN report were accurately called out for what they were, failure to adhere to the Trump narrative:
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show may have had the week off, but its podcast, The Weekly Show, did not. On Wednesday, Jon Stewart claimed that the Trump Administration reacted angrily to assessments that suggest the B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities weren’t as successful as advertised not because they were wrong or had obvious problems, but because “they demand 100 percent fealty.”
Stewart lamented, “Just the shallowness, sometimes, of their—that you know JD Vance, people are saying, ‘We’re concerned about intervention in the Middle East and how these things can have unforeseen consequences and instability throughout,’ and JD Vance says, ‘Yes, no, we understand that’s something the American people are afraid of, but you know the American people never had a smart person before. Now we have a smart person,’ a smart person that thinks anybody that might possibly look into whether or not it was actually obliterated is a scumbag.”
Looking into the matter doesn’t make you a scumbag. However, publishing a report about a leaked assessment suggesting a lack of success but not mentioning that it was “low confidence” while insisting you did might.
However, Stewart wasn’t interested in that and instead rolled on, “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt comes out and she, they ask her, ‘Was it obliterated?’ And she says, ‘Everybody knows what happens when you drop bunk—everybody knows,’ is what she said. Everybody knows what happens when you have a precision strike with these kinds of weapons. These weapons have never been used before in the history of the planet, but everybody knows what happened.
Leavitt’s comments were perfectly reasonable. For example, centrifuges are extremely sensitive, so the idea put forth in CNN’s article that they were left “intact” after being on the receiving end of 360,000 pounds of bombs was always hard to believe.
Tim Graham had a fit of Stelter Derangement Syndrome in a June 29 post:
CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter caused unintentional laughter in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter Thursday. In his typical role as defender of CNN’s viciously anti-Trump bias, he complained that anyone criticizing Natasha Bertrand’s anonymously-sourced claims that Operation Midnight Hammer only set the Iran nuclear program back a few months is unpatriotic. The media, they’re the patriotic ones!
[…]Fox’s Joe Concha offered the easy rebuttal, since Stelter didn’t take this approach to President Biden in decline. CNN’s Abby Phillip also took what was clearly the CNN party line. If you question our Trump-loathing, you’re the autocrat.
Says the guy who appears only on right-wing channels lest his anti-media narrative get challenged. indeed, Graham went on to cite another right-wing outlet to bash Stelter:
As Twitchy noted, Stelter can’t seem to tell the difference between journalism and partisan activism — or he thinks activism is the very best journalism. We’ve pointed out before that journalism awards aren’t so much about “excellence” as they are about picking the right targets. Nobody has to hand back their Pulitzer Prize for being wrong about Russiagate — because the cause was just.
Of course, Graham thinks that only right-wing activism qualifies as journalism, andhe offered no evidence that any report about “Russiagate” was “wrong.”
Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in a June 30 post:
CNN has dug in deep under the mountain of lies they’ve made in order to prop up the false narrative of serial misinformer Natasha Bertrand’s stenography for the anti-Trump deep state. During Monday afternoon’s CNN News Central, Bertrand was back at it, claiming that the Fordow site was only “severely damaged” on a “surface level” and mocked that the U.S. didn’t even try to hit a different bunker site. But earlier in the day, a couple of experts more in the know dropped their own bunker busters on CNN and blew up their narrative.
Fondacaro offered no evidence that any of those “experts” had any direct personal knowledge of what happened in the airstrikes.
There was also a June 30 column by Erick Erickson bashing CNN and breathlessly adding, “This was a brilliantly staged and executed operation by the Pentagon that the press attempted to discredit to attack Trump.”