At Thursday's press conference, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt showed no patience with a media pool that she said was putting its hatred of President Trump ahead of accurate reporting.
She specifically called out CNN's Natasha Bertrand, who was the first to break the leaked intel report that erroneously stated last week's bombing on Iran was not a success.
"The same reporter … has done this in the past," said Leavitt.
She listed multiple examples of Bertrand being duped by – or knowingly printing – falsehoods that made President Trump look bad: "Russiagate," the "suckers and losers" and "fine people" hoaxes, and the Hunter Biden laptop lie.
"In 2020, it was Natasha Bertrand who had 51 intelligence analysts falsely lie to her, but she still put it on paper for some reason that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation," Leavitt recalled.
Considering the totality of those mistakes – or purposeful lies – the press secretary concluded that Bertrand is unfit to be a reporter. The president has called for the news network to fire her.
"This is a reporter who has been, unfortunately, used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives," said Leavitt. "She should be ashamed of herself."
Tim Graham of Media Research Center agrees and says Bertrand is not alone.
"The motivations of the media are not just to be fact based," he asserts. "Their motivation is 'we must destroy Trump.'"
CNN, however, defends Bertrand, saying, "We stand 100% behind [her] journalism and specifically her and her colleagues' reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities."
A spokesperson for the network said in a statement posted to social media that the reporting "made clear that this was an initial finding the could change with additional intelligence."
"We have extensively covered President Trump's own deep skepticism about it," it said.
