Free Republic

Well, CNN is at the center of yet another fake news hoax. What number is this now? Honestly, too many to count. But this latest stunt is especially egregious because it involves our national security. So what happened? CNN ran a bogus story claiming that President Trump’s highly successful military strikes barely dented Iran’s nuclear program and only set them back “a few months.” The goal was obvious: downplay the operation and spin it as a failure. READ MORE: Cutthroat war between Bannon and Levin erupts… But here’s the problem: that claim completely contradicted the official military assessment, which stated...

President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that Democrat lawmakers are responsible for leaking top secret intelligence about last week’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the nuclear sites in Iran,” the president posted on Truth Social. “They should be prosecuted!” The post comes as the Pentagon, along with assistance from the FBI, is actively working to identify the source of leaks about a preliminary Central Command battle damage assessment. At least one anonymous source leaked the information, which was preliminary, to CNN and the New York Times. Both...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said U.S. strikes had destroyed a facility that is key to producing a nuclear weapon. He railed against a less optimistic (ANONYMOUSLY SOURCED) U.S. intelligence report.President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio made their most detailed case yet on Wednesday for why they believe the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities dealt a fatal blow to the country’s ambitions, pushing back on the findings of a U.S. intelligence report and statements from international nuclear inspectors. While Mr. Trump largely repeated his arguments that the facilities were “obliterated,” Mr. Rubio stepped in with a more...

What happens when a reporter gets caught spreading disinformation in the form of the biggest fake news of the 2020 presidential campaign? Why, promote them up the media food chain from a Politico reporter to a national security correspondent at CNN. Such was the reward for Natasha Bertrand for her role in "fortifying" the 2020 election against Donald Trump by hyping the disinformation campaign by 51 intelligence officials who incorrectly claimed that the highly damaging (to the Joe Biden campaign) information on Hunter Biden's laptop was really the result of Russian disinformation.So instead of eternally bearing the Scarlett Letter "D"...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is launching a probe into a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report leaked to CNN assessing damage from President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. Hegseth announced the probe during the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, saying that the media’s reporting on the leak was spun “to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.” The report was first leaked to CNN, which reported that the preliminary findings suggested that the strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan nuclear facilities on June 21 did not completely destroy...

President Donald Trump publicly humiliated CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a live press event at the NATO summit in The Hague. Collins, representing the deeply discredited network that Trump has long labeled “fake news,” asked a loaded question about Trump’s recent strike on Iranian nuclear facilities — and she got more than she bargained for. “Go ahead. Oh, fake news CNN? Ayayai, here we go,” Trump began, gesturing at Collins. “Wait ’til you hear this question. You should REALLY say how great our soldiers and warriors are.” The question, predictably slanted: COLLINS: “Are you relying on Israeli intelligence for your assessment...

The Milley boys at the Pentagon have come up with a new public relations "save" for Joe Biden and his pathetic indecisiveness about a China spy balloon brazenly traversing the continental United States until it was shot down over the Atlantic yesterday. According to the Pentagon's website, defense.gov: [cut] You know the press is going to be dining out on this for the next ten news cycles. There's just one problem, though -- the claim that Trump saw three Chinese balloons traverse through the U.S. on his watch and did nothing is ... deflating fast. First, we have an explicit...

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe refuted accounts from Pentagon officials that Chinese balloons entered U.S. airspace on at least three occasions under the Trump administration. Ratcliffe, who served as former President Donald Trump's spy chief from 2020 to 2021, joined a few other former Trump administration officials claiming to have no awareness of such an incursion and described the recent balloon incident as "unprecedented." "I can refute it. It didn't happen," Ratcliffe said... Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper both denied knowing about a similar instance of a Chinese balloon hovering through...

Late in the day Tuesday, CNN breathlessly ran their favorite story since the Trump-Musk bromance hit the skids. "Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say." CNN’s “reporters” could barely contain their excitement that their nightmare scenario was over: Trump, it appeared, hadn’t pulled off the most impressive military strike since "Operation Desert Fox." ("Desert Fox" was a 1998 anti-WMD mission, also used Tomahawks for support, but used 600 sorties to target almost 100 targets in Iraq. And as with "Operation Midnight Hammer," not a single U.S. service member or vehicle was...

The Defense Intelligence Agency has produced a 5-page preliminary report on the strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities which concludes the strikes were partially successful but failed to destroy the underground sites. That report seems to have leaked instantly to ever major news agency, starting with CNN.The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said...Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen on a second Signal group chat that included his wife, lawyer and brother, three people familiar with the chat told CNN.The revelation comes as some of Hegseth’s closest advisers have begun sounding the alarm about the secretary’s judgment, including his former press secretary, John Ullyot, and three former senior officials Hegseth fired last week — his top adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.

According to CNN reports, Pentagon brass met recently to discuss and plan how to override President Trump’s 47 orders. This smells like treason. The military-industrial complex is infuriated that the first president in 40 years who did not start a war while in office has returned to power. This latest report that the failed Pentagon brass who surrendered to the illiterate Taliban barbarians, donated billions of dollars in US weapons, and abandoned Bagram Air Force Base, are plotting against Trump 47 is not a complete surprise. Retired General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, openly...

The US military’s top commander in Europe compiled a list of weapons systems the US possesses that could help Ukraine in its fight against Russia that the Biden administration has not yet provided, including air-to-surface missiles and a secure communications network used by NATO. In an annex attached to a classified report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy that was delivered to Congress early last month, Gen. Chris Cavoli outlined a list of US capabilities that could help the Ukrainian military fight more effectively, according to people familiar with the report. The list included the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a...

Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition and military equipment resulting from the US and its allies’ struggle to resupply the country’s military is having an increasingly dire effect on the battlefield, US and NATO officials are warning, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv’s dwindling air defenses knowing that they likely won’t be replenished anytime soon. The Ukrainian military is “experiencing shortages in air defense munitions, mostly in the medium to long range,” a NATO official said on Wednesday. “It’s not just that we know that. It’s that Russia knows that. So Russia is using drones and missiles in ways that are...

What should be the attitude of the media towards someone notable for being the purveyor of the biggest election 2020 fake news story? Shun them? That would be the correct attitude for such journalism malpractice. However, in the case of CNN it actually promoted such a person. Natasha Bertrand who was the main person behind promoting the fake news story in Politico that the New York Post report in October 2020 revealing the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop was a result of Russian disinformation.The CNN announcement on Tuesday of Bertrand's promotion on X (which everyone still calls Twitter) went over...

Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

Russia has been capturing some of the US and NATO-provided weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and sending them to Iran, where the US believes Tehran will try to reverse-engineer the systems, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Over the last year, US, NATO and other Western officials have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have at times been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, the sources told CNN. In many of those cases, Russia has then flown the...

Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears to have failed while President Joe Biden was in Ukraine on Monday, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines, one official said. Another official said that the test did not pose a risk to the United States and that the US did not view the test as an anomaly or an escalation. The test of the heavy SARMAT missile – nicknamed the Satan II in the West and capable of delivering multiple nuclear...

It's now an infamous headline among conservatives and a sore spot for Politico. But at the time, the October 19, 2020, story by Natasha Bertrand had its intended bombshell effect with this headline: "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." Now former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Politico "deliberately distorted" the letter he and more than 50 others – many of them open Joe Biden supporters – signed. Critics are wondering why the players in the story are speaking out more than two years later – just as House Republicans are investigating the...