Fox News star Brit Hume turns on former colleague Pete Hegseth for outburst over Iran bombing intel

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

Brit Hume jumped to the defense of his Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin and slammed former co-worker Pete Hegseth for their clash over the Iran bombing.
Hegseth clashed with much of the press in his briefing on the strikes after several outlets claimed they had only set back Iran's nuclear facilities by months rather than decimating them.
However, he shared particular scorn for Fox's National Security Correspondent Griffin, saying: 'Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.'
Hume, a longtime fixture at the network, defended Griffin in a week where Tucker Carlson joined the parade of former Fox News anchors giving friendly fire her way.
'I have then, have had and still have, the greatest regard for her. The attack on her was unfair,' Hume said, criticizing Hegseth.
He said the attack was not deserved and Griffin's 'professionalism, knowledge and experience at the Pentagon is unmatched.'
Hegseth, a former weekend host for Fox News before being tapped to run the Department of Defense for Trump, was openly hostile to the media during a Thursday morning press conference at the Pentagon.
The entire briefing was seemingly held to push back on reports indicating that Operation Midnight Hammer - the name of the weekend bombing mission - was ineffective.
Griffin, a veteran Pentagon reporter who's been with the channel for decades, asked Hegseth to clarify whether Iran's already enriched uranium was destroyed by the U.S. strikes.
'There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,' the Pentagon secretary responded cagily.
Griffin then asked: 'That's not the question, though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain, or some of it?'
'There were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance? Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?'
'Of course, we're watching every single aspect,' Hegseth responded before bizarrely turning on his old colleague. 'But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.'
The veteran Pentagon reporter immediately interjected, highlighting to Hegseth how she was the first journalist to reveal how the operation targeted the nuclear facility's ventilation shafts and more.
'I was the first to report about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night, and in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission, with great accuracy,' the Fox News correspondent retorted.
'So I take issue with that,' she added.
Satellite imagery showed trucks arriving at the Fordow nuclear facility just days before the strikes, leading to questions about whether the Iranians moved their enriched uranium to another location before the U.S. bombs were dropped.
'I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be — moved or otherwise,' Hegseth later told another reporter.
Multiple sources familiar with an initial battle damage assessment told CNN and the New York Times that the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities only set back the country's nuclear program by a few months.
'It is preliminary,' Hegseth said of the leaked assessment on Thursday.
'It points out it is not coordinated with the intelligence community at all, there is low confidence in this report, there are gaps.'
The bigger issue, according to Hegseth, is the unpatriotic media.
'You cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and blood,' Hegseth charged the reporters in the room. 'You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.'
'Your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful, it's irresponsible.'
The Pentagon secretary also invoked statements from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Both intelligence chiefs put out statements on Wednesday night stating that the damage done to Iran's nuclear sites will take 'years' to rebuild.
'CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted strikes,' Hegseth said.
It came just days after Carlson admitted he wanted her out when he worked at Fox News, referring to her as 'the deepest of the deep state.'
As Trump announced a ceasefire - one Carlson reacted to by tweeting: 'Thank God' - he released an episode of his show where he continued to question his ex-employers coverage, zeroing in on Griffin, the network's Chief National Security Correspondent.
'Jennifer Griffin is, even by the standards of Pentagon employees, she's not technically an employee of the Pentagon. She's a shill, obviously, for the deepest of the deep states. But she's like a parody. She's like parody. It's like the whole thing,' Carlson said.
Carlson and fellow former Fox host Clayton Morris joked about Griffin's water-carrying for the 'deep state.'
'The crazy thing is Jen Griffin is a liar, but also very liberal, true Trump hater, to the point where I complained about her and I really tried not to complain about other people at Fox when I worked there,' he said.
'She was discrediting the channel, she was such a Trump hatter, and it was emotional.'
He even went to one of his superiors at the network and suggested Griffin wasn't helping.
Carlson said he asked: 'She's an idiot. She doesn't tell the truth. She misleads our viewers. And she's like a screaming liberal who hates Trump, who our viewers love. So what are we getting out of this?'
The response he got from the network was that 'you could not touch Jennifer Griffin.'
Morris noted that Griffin has an office at the Pentagon, suggesting she may be presenting bias in her coverage based on how close to her sources she is.