Things got highly entertaining in a Pentagon press conference back in late June of 2025, when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth sounded off on a “deep state” reporter from Fox News who tried to discredit him and the Pentagon with what he framed as being mendacious questions about the American strike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility.
That question and angry response came in the context of Hegseth arguing that the Air Force’s B-2 stealth bombers, high-tech marvels produced by Northrop Grumman, hit exactly what they wanted to hit in the strike on the facility, saying, “there’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests that what we didn’t hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations.”
That provoked a question from Jennifer Griffin. Griffin was a colleague of his when he was a host at Fox News, and she remains with that network, working as a longtime member of the Pentagon press corps. She pressed Hegseth on whether the uranium stocks the Pentagon had tried to hit had indeed been destroyed by the strike.
Pressing him on the alleged intelligence showing that the Islamic Republic of Iran could have moved the uranium, she asked, “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 because 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?”
Hegseth responded by slamming her for the question and for the general tone she has taken in reporting on what is going on with the Trump Administration, saying, “Of course, we’re watching every single aspect, but Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally.” He added, as she tried pushing the question on him again, “I’m familiar,” meaning he knew about the claims she was trying to push and understood it to be incorrect.
Griffin, continuing with the questions regardless of his attacks, noted that she had reported on the “ventilation shafts on Saturday night.” She added, trying to boost her own credentials, “And in fact, I was the first to describe the b2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission, with great accuracy.” She then snapped that she took issue with his portrayal of her and her questions.
Hegseth, responding somewhat sarcastically, said, “I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the first operate, the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you’ve been here. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So we’re looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.”
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Watch the incident here:
As the American Tribune has previously reported, in an episode from his podcast, former FOX News anchor Tucker Carlson slammed Jennifer Griffin as being a “deep state” journalist. Starting his demolition, Tucker said, “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.”
Continuing to criticize the so-called journalist, he added, “The crazy thing is Jen Griffin is a liar, but also very liberal, a 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.”
Watch Tucker here:
Also during the press conference, Hegseth sparred with a woke journalist who pressed him on when he would “acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission. The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.”
Hegseth snapped back, “So when I say something like our boys and bombers, see this is the kind of thing the press does right? Of course, the Chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. That’s fantastic. She’s fantastic. She’s a hero. I want more female bomber pilots. I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things. But when you spin it as because I say our boys and bombers is a common phrase, I’ll keep saying things like that, whether they’re men or women, very proud of that female pilot, just like I’m very proud of those male pilots.”
He added that such gender games were not something his Pentagon would be caring about,saying, “And I don’t care if it’s a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don’t care. But it’s the obsession with race and gender in this department that’s changed priorities. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t play your little games.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video