Posting on X, Vice President JD Vance went nuclear and sounded off on the lying mainstream media for creating a false story and fake narrative meant to harm the Trump Administration. The impetus for his argument came from the media’s use of a leaked, preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency claiming that the strike on Iran was not a success.
As background, in the days following the B-2 bomber strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, CNN and the New York Times published reports based on what leakers told them, claiming in the process that the strikes were mere delaying actions that harmed the facilities only somewhat. Pete Hegseth and President Trump then slammed both the NYT and CNN.
Referring to the clip of them doing so, VP Vance noted that the media is a total mess and has shown it doesn’t care a bit about the truth, but rather about creating a narrative. He said, “This is such a revealing clip. The American media is full of the least curious, least insightful people in our country.”
Continuing, the vice president noted that the media’s presentation of the report and behavior during the whole situation has been utterly disgraceful, saying, “To recap, an out of context, ‘low confidence’ and incomplete intelligence report was selectively leaked to the media. The media reported on the findings without any real effort to figure out whether they represent any part of (much less the full) truth.”
He added that even mainstream groups like the IAEA have contradicted the media’s claims, saying, “The way the media has presented the report is contradicted by the IAEA, the Iranians themselves, and the administration’s political and defense leadership. More importantly, the media’s reports are contradicted by common sense.”
Further, the vice president noted that the strike appears to have been a substantial success, given the weapons used and the clear indications that they went where they were intended to go. He said, “To summarize: a dozen 30,000-pound bunker busters were dropped on Iran’s main nuclear site. (The other two sites that were targeted suffered heavy damage too). No one disputes they hit their targets. No one disputes the explosive or destructive power of the weapons. No one disputes that a week ago, Iran could have easily assembled a nuclear weapon and now they can’t.”
Further, the vice president added that the media has tried to frame the whole situation as a failure despite the reality that it was likely a success. He said, “The entire debate–even accepting the press’s dishonest framing–is not about whether Iran can now build a nuke. They can’t. It’s about how much rebuilding the Iranians would have to do in order to achieve a nuclear weapon. In other words, after a wildly successful military operation with no American casualties, the American media is trying to blame Donald Trump for the existence of facilities *that haven’t even been built yet.* (Set to the side Iran’s willingness to rebuild their program. As the President himself said, they now know there are serious consequences for rebuilding. They also learned that we can very easily set their progress back.)”
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VP Vance further noted that, if the media was curious and intent on doing its job rather than just pushing an obviously untrue narrative, it would have looked into why Deep State bureaucrats were trying to discredit the president’s foreign policy by acting illegally and leaking an out of date report.
He said, on that point, “There is actually an interesting story here, if the media was interested in telling it. Why are members of the intelligence community leaking incomplete reports against the elected leadership of the country? Why have the same reporters who have gotten so much wrong learned so little? What is the purpose of these leaks–who is behind them, and what are they trying to achieve?”
Concluding, the vice president noted that the media will, of course, not look into that actual story because it would rather just push a narrative. He said, “The media won’t investigate that story, though it would be in the public interest to do so. So pay attention to the reporters who are laundering talking points from junior careerists in the intelligence community. President Trump has obliterated the Iranian nuclear program. The American media seems destined to obliterate their own credibility on this fake story.”
Watch the clip to which VP Vance was referring here: