(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) In recent days, senior Trump administration officials have increased their criticism and complaints about negative coverage of the US-Israeli war against Iran, with President Trump even suggesting certain media outlets could face “charges for treason.”
Trump made the comments in a long post on Truth Social put out on Sunday night, where he claimed that Iran has been feeding “false information” to the “Fake News media” and said fake AI videos were being circulated.
The president said there was a fake video that showed the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on fire. “The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!” Trump wrote.
While a fake video of Abraham Lincoln was circulated on social media, there’s no indication that it was picked up by any major media outlets. The only media outlet President Trump named in his post was The Wall Street Journal, which he accused of “false reporting” over a report on five US Air Force refueling tankers being damaged by an Iranian missile strike in Saudi Arabia.
However, Trump also acknowledged that one tanker was damaged and that the other four were back in service, which doesn’t refute the Journal report since it said the aircraft were not fully destroyed and were being repaired.
“The five US Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal’s false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies,” Trump said.
The president also pointed to comments from Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, who is threatening to revoke the licenses of news broadcasters for their coverage of the war in Iran. “I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr … looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations,” he added.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has also complained that media outlets haven’t been “patriotic” enough in their coverage. “We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” Hegseth said at a press conference on Friday. “Yet some in this crew, in the press, just can’t stop. Allow me to make a few suggestions. People look up at the TV, and they see banners, they see headlines. I used to be in that business. And I know that everything is written intentionally.”
The US war chief continued, “For example, a banner or a headline: ‘Mideast war intensifies,’ splashing on the screen the last couple of days, alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit, because that’s what they do. What should the banner read instead? How about, ‘Iran increasingly desperate,’ because they are. They know it and so do you, if it can be admitted.”
Hegseth described a headline that said the “war is widening” as fake despite the conflict spreading across the region. He suggested a “real headline” for an “actually patriotic press” could say “Iran shrinking, going underground,” though senior Iranian officials attended a public Quds Day march in Tehran that same day.
Hegseth also accused CNN of disseminating “fake news” for reporting that the Trump administration “underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz” and said that he was looking forward to the network being taken over by David Ellison, who, along with his father Larry Ellison, recently acquired CBS News. Larry Ellison is known as a Trump donor and a major supporter of Israel, having donated millions to the Israeli military.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
