Trump Wants CNN Reporter He Spent Days Watching Fired ‘Like a Dog'
Donald Trump has unleashed a nasty attack on a CNN journalist who broke news of an intelligence leak about the Iran strikes, demanding that she be 'thrown out like a dog'.
In his latest tirade since the leak made headlines, the president also revealed he has been watching the reporter, Natasha Bertrand, on CNN for days-even as he traversed the globe for the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
'Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out 'like a dog,' he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The meltdown was the latest salvo Trump has launched towards the media, ever since it began questioning whether US strikes on Iran's three major nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'obliterated,' as he has repeatedly claimed.
In another post, Trump wrote: 'She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It's people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn't have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!'
But CNN clapped back on Wednesday, saying in a statement that the company stood '100% behind Bertrand's journalism' and that of her colleagues.
'We do not believe it reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest,' said the statement, by CNN's communications division.
Trump, who, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden does not own a presidential dog, has often used animalistic slurs to hit out at people.
Over the past few years, he has likened a long list of perceived enemies to dogs — including former FBI director James B. Comey, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and even his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was once a rival for the GOP's 2016 presidential nomination.
But his latest tirade is emblematic of the fury within the White House over the leaked intelligence assessment, which suggested that the strikes against Iran this weekend only set Iran's enrichment program back by six months and did not destroy its core components.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm, and also reportedly found that the bombing sealed off the entrances to two of Iran's three main nuclear facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was the first to reject the report, claiming it was leaked by a 'low level loser' to undermine the president.
Rubio also weighed in, saying it was the work of 'professional stabbers' while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has launched an investigation into the leak, said it demeaned the work of US military fighters.
'If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel, and go really deep. Because Iran's nuclear program is obliterated,' a fuming Hegseth told reporters Wednesday, standing alongside Trump at the NATO summit.
Trump, meanwhile, said the findings of the report were 'not complete' and that more information would paint the true picture of the battle damage caused over the weekend.
CNN also acknowledged that the findings were only preliminary. Nonetheless, the president's personal attack against Bertrand demanded that she be fired and accused her of 'attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit 'pay dirt' — TOTAL OBLITERATION!'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
6 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Supreme Court has 6 cases to decide, including birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is in the final days of a term that has lately been dominated by the Trump administration's emergency appeals of lower court orders seeking to slow President Donald Trump's efforts to remake the federal government. But the justices also have six cases to resolve that were argued between January and mid-May. One of the argued cases was an emergency appeal, the administration's bid to be allowed to enforce Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally. The remaining opinions will be delivered Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts said. On Thursday, a divided court allowed states to cut off Medicaid money to Planned Parenthood amid a wider Republican-backed push to defund the country's biggest abortion provider. Here are some of the biggest remaining cases: Trump's birthright citizenship order has been blocked by lower courts The court rarely hears arguments over emergency appeals, but it took up the administration's plea to narrow orders that have prevented the citizenship changes from taking effect anywhere in the U.S. The issue before the justices is whether to limit the authority of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have plagued both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past 10 years. These nationwide court orders have emerged as an important check on Trump's efforts and a source of mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies. At arguments last month, the court seemed intent on keeping a block on the citizenship restrictions while still looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders. It was not clear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about what would happen if the administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally. Democratic-led states, immigrants and rights groups who sued over Trump's executive order argued that it would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years. The court seems likely to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ storybooks in public schools Parents in the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, want to be able to pull their children out of lessons that use the storybooks, which the county added to the curriculum to better reflect the district's diversity. The school system at one point allowed parents to remove their children from those lessons, but then reversed course because it found the opt-out policy to be disruptive. Sex education is the only area of instruction with an opt-out provision in the county's schools. The school district introduced the storybooks in 2022, with such titles as 'Prince and Knight' and 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding.' The case is one of several religious rights cases at the court this term. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. The decision also comes amid increases in recent years in books being banned from public school and public libraries. A three-year battle over congressional districts in Louisiana is making its second trip to the Supreme Court Lower courts have struck down two Louisiana congressional maps since 2022 and the justices are weighing whether to send state lawmakers back to the map-drawing board for a third time. The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life. At arguments in March, several of the court's conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act. Before the court now is a map that created a second Black majority congressional district among Louisiana's six seats in the House of Representatives. The district elected a Black Democrat in 2024. A three-judge court found that the state relied too heavily on race in drawing the district, rejecting Louisiana's arguments that politics predominated, specifically the preservation of the seats of influential members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson. The Supreme Court ordered the challenged map to be used last year while the case went on. Lawmakers only drew that map after civil rights advocates won a court ruling that a map with one Black majority district likely violated the landmark voting rights law. The justices are weighing a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography Texas is among more than a dozen states with age verification laws. The states argue the laws are necessary as smartphones have made access to online porn, including hardcore obscene material, almost instantaneous. The question for the court is whether the measure infringes on the constitutional rights of adults as well. The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, agrees that children shouldn't be seeing pornography. But it says the Texas law is written too broadly and wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online that is vulnerable to hacking or tracking. The justices appeared open to upholding the law, though they also could return it to a lower court for additional work. Some justices worried the lower court hadn't applied a strict enough legal standard in determining whether the Texas law and others like that could run afoul of the First Amendment.
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Much Will the Supreme Court Let Trump Get Away With? We Got an Ominous Sign This Week.
Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport immigrants who have criminal records and lack permanent legal status. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack immigrants with permanent legal status too. In our series Who Gets to Be American This Week?, we'll track the Trump administration's attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment. For the past six months, President Donald Trump and his administration have contorted, stress-tested, and outright violated law to achieve his delusional 1 million deportations goal. The judicial system has been a critical check, forcing the federal government to follow the law—and at times it has worked as intended. But the Supreme Court has been throwing wrenches in our legal machinery that often seem to defy logic. In an order released this week, the court's conservative justices signaled they are unwilling to stand up to the Trump administration and would rather allow the White House to simply defy our justice system as it pleases. Meanwhile, one victim of the Trump administration's lawlessness, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was finally brought back to the U.S. after being mistakenly deported four months ago. But thanks to a newly unveiled criminal indictment and a pending immigration detainer, it's highly unlikely that he will be returning home to his wife and children anytime soon. Here's the immigration news we're keeping an eye on this week: Less than three months after the Supreme Court shot down an injunction preventing deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, it released another historic shadow docket decision. The majority of the justices chose to lift a lower court judge's injunction that had, up until Monday, prevented the federal government from removing immigrants from the U.S. to third countries, instead of their home country of origin, without at least giving them advance notice and allowing them to object on the grounds that they face torture there. 'The court's order is certainly apt to have immediate and devastating consequences for all those in the crosshairs of the administration's chaotic and increasingly random deportation campaign,' Deborah Pearlstein, director of Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Policy and a professor of law and public affairs, told me. 'Moreover, it sends a really frightening signal about whether the court is going to stand up to what are increasingly blatant instances of administration defiance of court orders.' The Supreme Court's intervention comes after the Trump administration repeatedly violated U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy's orders by attempting to send migrants to South Sudan, Libya, and El Salvador. The targets of this scheme argue that they will be tortured and killed if removed to these countries, making their expulsions unlawful under the Convention Against Torture and various federal laws. Murphy ruled that, at a minimum, the government must tell migrants where they are being sent, and give them an opportunity to object, with the assistance of counsel, on the grounds that they'll be tortured there. Roughly two weeks after Murphy issued his injunction mandating this due process, the Trump administration defied it. And yet, on Monday, SCOTUS rewarded the government by sweeping away the injunction and allowing these potentially lethal removals to resume. The high court's decision shocks the conscience, as it effectively allows the federal government to get away scot-free with defying a lower court judge's order, establishing an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. It also subjects thousands of migrants to potential torture and death overseas in clear violation of federal law. And the justices offered zero explanation, since they issued their order on the shadow docket. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a scathing dissent. 'Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable,' Sotomayor wrote, 'than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.' The Supreme Court's decision is especially alarming in light of a new whistleblower complaint, Pearlstein noted. In the complaint, a Justice Department lawyer accused Emil Bove III, Trump's former personal attorney who has been named principal associate deputy attorney general, of telling subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Trump's mass deportation agenda. (Trump has nominated Bove to a federal appeals court; at his Senate hearing on Thursday, Republicans dismissed the complaint as partisan retribution.) 'I feel less confident in the court's willingness to stand up for an independent judiciary than at any point since Trump's inauguration,' Pearlstein said. After being mistakenly deported to El Salvador, denied due process, and placed in the country's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center for roughly three months, 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia was finally brought back to the U.S. this month. Now he faces a dubious federal indictment and is in federal custody. And despite U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes declaring he's eligible for pretrial release, it's unlikely he'll be going back to his family in Maryland anytime soon. On June 13, Abrego Garcia saw his wife and mother for the first time since before his March deportation, in a Tennessee courtroom where his lawyers argued against the Department of Justice's allegations that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang and smuggled migrants across the country. During a hearing over whether he should be held in pretrial detention, Abrego Garcia's defense attorney insisted he doesn't pose a serious flight risk, arguing that the government provided 'zero' facts to prove that his client has a history of evading arrest or engaging in willful international travel recently, or has strong relations in countries that cause him to seek refuge there or any prior felony convictions. Over the weekend, Judge Holmes ultimately agreed. She noted that the government's evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 'consists of general statements, all double hearsay, from two cooperating witnesses,' both of whom have serious criminal histories and hope to avoid deportation or prison time if they cooperate with prosecutors. The very same day that Holmes ordered Abrego Garcia's release, government lawyers filed a motion to stay her decision. Homeland Security has an active immigration detainer against Abrego Garcia, which the Department of Justice says means 'he will remain in custody pending deportation and Judge Holmes' release order would not immediately release him to the community under any circumstance.' Abrego Garcia says he was fleeing death threats and extortion by a local gang when he first entered the U.S. in 2012 at 16 years old. In 2019, he was arrested for loitering but had no previous criminal record, and a judge granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he allegedly faced persecution. Despite that, the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March—a move that officials admitted was an error—on flights that took off in defiance of a judge's restraining order. And despite the Supreme Court ruling in April that the government must 'facilitate' the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. so he could receive due process, he was not flown back until June. In recent weeks, masked federal agents have raided car washes and other businesses in Southern California, even stationing themselves outside Dodger Stadium. (The team denied Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entry to the stadium itself.) In one incident, according to the Los Angeles Times, a man stopped his unmarked car in the middle of an intersection, took out his pistol, and aimed it at a group of pedestrians. He did not hurt anyone, eventually getting back into the car and driving off with red and blue emergency lights flashing. After reviewing surveillance footage, Pasadena police Chief Gene Harris told the newspaper his department concluded the man was in fact an ICE agent. 'They show up without uniforms. They show up completely masked. They refuse to give ID,' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a press conference. 'Who are these people? And frankly, the vests that they have on look like they ordered them from Amazon. Are they bounty hunters? Are they vigilantes? If they're federal officials, why is it that they do not identify themselves?' Similar scenes have been playing out in other parts of the country in recent months. Back in March, Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by federal agents dressed in plainclothes and face masks and forced into an unmarked van. In Chicago earlier this month, masked ICE agents raided a building where an immigrant supervision program operates. At least 10 people were taken away in vans, with no clear understanding of why they were detained. 'We don't know who is arresting our brothers and sisters, because they are hiding behind masks,' Michael Rodriguez, a city alderman, told CBS News. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who himself was arrested last week, witnessed immigrants getting arrested at a Manhattan immigration court 'by the same non-uniformed, masked ICE agents who gave no reason for their removal, ripped them out of the arms of escorts in a proceeding that bears no resemblance to justice,' he told CBS News. California state Sen. Scott Wiener compared federal agents' tactics to 'Nazi-level thuggery,' and has introduced legislation that would ban local, state, and federal law enforcement from covering their faces when interacting with the public—with some exceptions. Violations would amount to a misdemeanor charge. ICE acting director Todd Lyons defended the agency's use of masks, arguing it protects agents from people who 'don't like what immigration enforcement is.' He also blamed sanctuary jurisdictions, where local authorities do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, suggesting masks would not be necessary if they 'would change their policy.'
Wall Street Journal
9 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Israel's War With Iran Has Reordered the Middle East—but Not as Expected
The Middle East is undergoing a dramatic realignment—just not the one U.S. and regional leaders envisioned less than two years ago. Before the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, years of painstaking negotiations brought Saudi Arabia to the cusp of a landmark deal for diplomatic recognition of Israel. That would have solidified an Israeli-Arab coalition against Iran, locked in U.S. support for Saudi security and opened the door to greater acceptance of Israel in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
