Operation Midnight Hammer was a tremendous success. There were no leaks before the operation, and Iran’s nuclear sites were destroyed. But, unable to admit that Trump did good, critics in the media wasted no time dismissing it as little more than a symbolic gesture. CNN quickly ran with a leaked “low-confidence” intelligence report claiming the strikes had minimal impact, and the rest of the legacy media predictably followed suit — denying success, questioning the intel, and doing everything possible to undermine President Trump. But the facts told a very different story. Israeli intelligence confirmed Iran’s nuclear program had been crippled. Iran’s own government admitted that key facilities were badly damaged.
One by one, the media’s narrative that Operation Midnight Hammer was a failure crumbled under the sheer weight of the facts. But rather than admit they were wrong and acknowledge the operation’s overwhelming success, the usual suspects in the press are still scrambling to downplay it, grasping for any excuse to dismiss or discredit a mission that met or exceeded expectations.
During a Pentagon press conference Thursday morning, the media’s relentless campaign to cast doubt on America’s military achievements was on full display.
One reporter, apropos of nothing, asked Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directly whether he had been pressured by political leaders to manipulate intelligence assessments. The intent was obvious: suggest that the administration might be cooking the books to make the mission look more successful than it was, just as critics claim happened before the Iraq invasion.
“Have you been pressured, um, to change your assessment or give a more rosy intelligence, uh, assessment to us by any political factors, whether it’s the President or the Secretary? And if you were, would you do that?” the reporter asked, laying the groundwork for the tired narrative that the Pentagon can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
It was an absurd question, and Gen. Caine was blunt in his response.
“That one’s easy: No,” he said. “No, I have not, and no, I would not. My job as the Chairman is to offer a range of options to the President, uh, and the National Command Authority to deliver the risks, uh, um, associated with each of those, uh, and then take the orders of the National Command Authority and, and go execute ‘em.” He went on to squash the talking point, saying, “I’ve never been pressured by the President or the Secretary to do anything other than tell ‘em exactly what I’m thinking. And that’s exactly what I’ve done.”
But the media wasn’t satisfied. Sensing that the narrative wasn’t sticking, the reporter pivoted back to the mission itself, asking about public imagery suggesting that highly enriched uranium had been moved out of Fordow before the strikes. The implication, of course, was that the operation had failed to achieve its objectives, another favorite talking point in the press’s ongoing effort to downplay American success.
Related: The Legacy Media’s Bogus Iran Narrative Just Got Nuked
Pete Hegseth, stepping in to address the question, shot down the speculation. “There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests … we didn’t hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations.”
In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” The strikes were so effective that they triggered a localized release of radioactive and chemical material inside the targeted complexes—an unmistakable sign that critical infrastructure was thoroughly disabled, and nuclear material was present.
🔥Hegseth just NUKED this reporter.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) June 26, 2025
"Jennifer, you've been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally." pic.twitter.com/G9E0japuoQ
Despite clear evidence of success, the media instantly fell back on its tired playbook — shifting goalposts, questioning sources, and sowing doubt. It’s not about informing the public; it’s about undermining trust in the mission and in Trump.
The operation was a clear success, and when early attempts to downplay it failed, reporters reached for a new angle: alluding to the Iraq WMD debacle and invoking former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2004 claim that “it is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies.”
It’s a desperate move that reeks of bias, not journalism.
Once again, the U.S. executed a precision strike on Iran’s nuclear program — and before the smoke cleared, the media was scrambling to discredit it. Why? Because they can’t stand the idea of Donald Trump scoring a foreign policy win.
