White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt unloaded on CNN Friday, calling a report that President Trump's national security team failed to anticipate Iran's potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz "100% FAKE NEWS."
The rebuke came after CNN reported Thursday that Trump's national security team "failed to fully account for the potential consequences" of U.S. strikes, specifically the possibility that Iran would move to shut down the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil shipments pass.
Leavitt didn't mince words on X:
"The idea that chairman Cain and Secretary Hegseth weren't prepared for this possibility is PREPOSTEROUS."
She went further, pointing out that neutralizing Iran's ability to threaten the strait was baked into the operation itself:
"The President was fully briefed on it, and a goal of the Operation itself, to annihilate the terrorist Iranian regime's navy, missiles, drone production infrastructure, and other threat capabilities is quite literally intended to deprive them of their ability to close the Strait."
Read that again. The entire point of Operation Epic Fury was to destroy the Iranian regime's capacity to hold global shipping hostage. CNN's thesis is that the administration never considered the very thing the operation was designed to prevent, as Fox News reports.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth blasted the report during remarks at the Pentagon Friday, calling it "more fake news from CNN" and "patently ridiculous."
Hegseth framed the threat in terms that anyone paying attention for the last several decades would recognize:
"For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This is always what they do, hold the strait hostage."
Then the line that landed hardest: "CNN doesn't think we thought of that."
Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, added his own assessment on X, and it wasn't subtle:
"As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, let me make clear: whoever leaked this lied."
He followed up with a suggestion CNN might want to consider: "CNN should do some fact-checking."
Here's where it gets interesting. CNN issued a clarification to the story on Friday. The updated version now acknowledges that "top Trump administration officials briefed lawmakers on long-standing military plans to address a major disruption to the Strait, according to one official." That's a significant concession buried inside an update.
But the clarification also tried to thread a needle, noting that "multiple sources familiar with the session said there was no indication there were any near-term solutions." The original report leaned on anonymous sources claiming the administration was blindsided. The updated version concedes there were plans. Those are two very different stories.
When Fox News Digital reached CNN for comment, the network responded: "We stand by our reporting." CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson echoed the sentiment on X: "We stand by our journalism."
Standing by a story you've already materially amended is a choice.
The CNN dustup wasn't an isolated incident. The White House has repeatedly clashed with major news outlets this week over coverage of the Iran conflict. On Thursday, Leavitt called for ABC News to retract a separate story, accusing the network of spreading "false information to intentionally alarm the American people."
According to Leavitt, the ABC report was based on "one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip." ABC News has since updated its story with an editor's note acknowledging that the FBI's alert included the detail that the information was unverified, a fact the original story apparently failed to emphasize.
Two major networks. Two stories require significant corrections or clarifications. One week.
The pattern here isn't complicated. Anonymous sources feed breathless claims to outlets already predisposed to frame military action as reckless. The claims get published. The administration pushes back with named officials making on-the-record denials. The outlets quietly update their stories while insisting nothing was wrong in the first place.
Cotton's point deserves weight. He chairs the Intelligence Committee. He has access to the classified briefings CNN's anonymous sources claim to be describing. And he says whoever leaked to CNN lied. That's not a vague denial from a communications staffer. That's the senator with the most direct oversight authority calling the sourcing fraudulent.
The Strait of Hormuz has been a flashpoint in U.S. strategic planning for decades. Every military planner who has ever war-gamed a conflict with Iran has accounted for it.
The suggestion that an administration actively striking Iranian naval and missile infrastructure somehow forgot about the strait those assets are designed to threaten is not serious analysis. It's narrative construction.
CNN wanted the story to be about incompetence. The story is actually about an operation designed to eliminate the very threat CNN accused the administration of ignoring. The clarification they were forced to publish proves it.
