Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth excoriated Jennifer Griffin, a former Fox News colleague, when the reporter questioned the success of the U.S. attack on Iran's uranium enrichment, the UK Daily Mail reported. Hegseth has expressed a wider mistrust of the mainstream media.
Last weekend, the U.S. launched Operation Midnight Hammer to take out Iran's supply of enriched uranium. It was widely believed this was part of a clandestine nuclear program that has now been taken out, though reporters have attempted to undermine that success.
Griffen was one of those reporters who pushed back on the Pentagon's official remarks about the operation. Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, was not about to let his former co-worker get away with it, as a video from the briefing shared Thursday demonstrated.
Hegseth fielded questions about the White House's assessment of the operation. Griffin, a longtime Fox News Pentagon reporter, probed the defense secretary about whether all of the enriched uranium at the site was destroyed in the bombing attacks.
"There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations," Hegseth responded. Griffin pushed back trying to craft a narrative and asked if he had "certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was in Fordow" when the strike happened.
"There were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance? Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?" Griffin persisted.
"Of course, we're watching every single aspect," Hegseth replied. Then he quickly turned to personally admonish Griffin for her coverage that skews against the Trump administration.
"But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says," Hegseth said. Griffin defended herself, noting she "was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission, with great accuracy," and this made her "take issue" with Hegseth's remarks.
While Hegseth retreated briefly from his combativeness, another reporter followed up with a question that played off of Griffin's gripe last week about remarks made following the bombing. After the successful mission, Hegseth thanked "our boys" who made it possible.
Hegseth schooled the reporter in the room that he used the phrase as a blanket term for all of those involved in the mission, regardless of their sex. However, it was Griffin who first needled Hegseth about it on social media.
"We were able to destroy nuclear capabilities. And OUR BOYS in those bombers are on their way home right now," Griffin quoted Hegseth in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, adding her own emphasis.
"Fox News has learned that at least one of the B2 pilots who took part in the Iran mission was female," Griffin sought to correct the record. This demonstrates that Griffin is at odds with President Donald Trump's Pentagon, or at least with her former colleague.
The mainstream media should be impartial and cover issues from a neutral standpoint. However, something about the Trump presidency has revealed their biases, and perhaps Griffin was just the latest to succumb to the force of such emotions.
