Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth went off on Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin during a fiery press conference Thursday morning, ripping into her over a leaked intelligence report that challenges the White House’s claims about U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
The outburst reflected growing anger inside the Trump administration over media coverage of a classified U.S. intelligence assessment that suggests Iran’s uranium program wasn’t hit as hard as President Trump and his team claim.
“Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” Hegseth snapped, after Griffin asked a pointed question about whether the U.S. was certain highly enriched uranium had been moved from Fordow before the bombing.
Griffin didn’t back down.
“In fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy,” she fired back. “So I take issue with that.”
Hegseth, visibly angry, didn’t respond to the substance of her question and instead turned his fire on the press as a whole.
“You cheer against Trump so hard; it’s like in your DNA,” he said. “You want him not to be successful so bad that you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.”
He then launched into a rant praising the complexity of the mission and accusing the media of ignoring the courage it took to pull it off.
“How many stories have been written about how hard it is, I don’t know, to fly a plane for 36 hours?” he barked. “Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done the story? How about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F-15? Or to refuel mid-air?”
The clash with Griffin—who worked with Hegseth at Fox and is one of the most experienced defense reporters in the country—marked a rare public breakdown in the relationship between the Pentagon and the press corps.
The intelligence leak that sparked the outrage was a preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency. It concluded that while the strikes blocked access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, the underground sites themselves likely survived. According to the assessment, Iran’s ability to enrich uranium may only have been delayed by about six months.
That didn’t sit well with Trump or his top brass. Hegseth called the leaks “irresponsible” and doubled down on the claim that Iran’s nuclear capability had been “obliterated.”
At one point, he even interrupted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, to hammer that point home.
“I can say obliterated,” Hegseth said. “He’s not involved in politics. That’s my lane… I can use the word obliterated.”
Caine, for his part, didn’t go that far. He showed video footage that appeared to show tunnels at Fordow collapsing under massive U.S. bombs. But when asked if he had been pressured to change his assessment, he made it clear: “No, I have not… I’ve never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell them exactly what I’m thinking.”
Griffin’s question was especially sensitive because she had previously reported that Hegseth shared classified information on Signal with Trump’s Cabinet members—raising concerns among military officials.
Meanwhile, the White House is demanding the leaker be punished. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week, “The individual who leaked this should be in jail.”
Trump himself has raged on social media, slamming CNN and The New York Times for undermining what he called a “LEGENDARY” mission.
“These Patriots were very upset!” he wrote on Truth Social. “They landed, they knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News… They felt terribly!”
Iran’s Supreme Leader dismissed the attack entirely, claiming it did “nothing significant.”
Watch the tense press briefing below:
