Tapper rips Trump’s ‘deranged’ attacks on CNN, New York Times Iran reporting

CNN anchor Jake Tapper ripped President Trump’s attacks on the media as “deranged” on Friday after the president lashed out against what he views as “treasonous” coverage of the conflict with Iran. “Reporting these facts isn’t treason, and it’s deranged for any president to say such a thing and potentially dangerous for the reporters he’s accusing of treason,” Tapper said during a segment on “The Lead.” Trump scolded New York Times (NYT) reporter David Sanger earlier Friday as the longtime correspondent was pressing him about the U.S. military’s 38-day bombing campaign inside Iran. Sanger wrote in a NYT report earlier this month that the U.S.’s core objectives in the war “clearly have not” been achieved, despite the Trump administration’s repeated assertions that they had. He noted that Tehran’s nuclear stockpile remained untouched, and the sides appeared no closer to a deal on constraining the program. CNN also reported in April that roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers had survived U.S.-Israeli strikes and thousands of one-way attack drones remained in its arsenal, citing three sources familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments. Trump made clear his displeasure with that reporting, labeling the outlets as “the worst” and accusing journalists of misrepresenting the situation. “We’ve had a total victory, except like people like you that don’t write the truth,” he said aboard Air Force One. “You should be ashamed. I actually think it’s treason when you write like they’re doing well militarily, and they have no navy, no air force, no anti anything.” Tapper defended CNN and the newspaper’s reporting as “100 percent true.” He drew historical comparisons to coverage of the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 in refuting Trump’s “treason” claim. “Treason, of course, is punishable by death, potentially, which is all part of the point of the president’s accusation,” the host argued, accusing Trump of trying to intimidate the media into not reporting “anything that doesn’t please him or adhere to what he’s trying to tell the American people.” “The president’s real issue here is not with us, it is with the facts that we are reporting, and with the intelligence reports that contradict his claims,” Tapper added. “His real issue is the fact that the war isn’t over, and it seems his real issue is that there are still some of us willing to tell the American people these facts, despite his best efforts.” Trump and others in his orbit have regularly complained about how the media has covered the conflict, which entered its 12th week on Saturday. During a Pentagon press briefing last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth compared some journalists to the Pharisees, a Jewish group frequently portrayed in the Bible as opponents of Jesus. “As I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops,” Defense Secretary Hegseth said. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.”