Nicolle Wallace called out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his performative news conference on Thursday, which she argued did little to resolve the issue “haunting” the Trump administration in the wake of the United States’ airstrikes on Iran.
That issue, according to Wallace, revolves around one key question: “Has Iran’s nuclear program been — as Donald Trump asserted Saturday night and has repeated every day since — ‘obliterated’?”
During his remarks Thursday, Hegseth repeated Trump’s claim that the facilities had been “obliterated.” However, as Wallace noted, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, refused to use that word when describing the results of the strike. Wallace said Caine’s choice encapsulated “the whole issue that’s being debated.”
“Were the strikes successful in terms of hitting targets? Yes. But did the strikes deliver the result that the administration says they did, and says they wanted?” Wallace asked.
Wallace also tore into Hegseth over his treatment of the media during the news conference. “Here’s what happened when Fox News’ Pentagon reporter, Hegseth’s former colleague, Jennifer Griffin, asked the incredibly important and respectful and relevant question whether the Iranians moved uranium out of the Fordo site,” Wallace said, before playing a clip of Griffin and Hegseth’s exchange, during which the defense secretary personally attacked his former colleague and accused her of being “about the worst” at intentionally misrepresenting what Trump says. Wallace also praised Griffin for standing up for herself and her reporting: That was America’s secretary of defense saying to Fox’s highly respected, highly credible, highly experienced Pentagon correspondent, ‘Jennifer, you’re the worst.’ And you saw her there take issue with the assessment and go on to defend her reporting, none of which has been disproven. It’s just a taste of what happened today at the Pentagon from the secretary of defense, whose salary is paid for by all of our taxpayer dollars. Watch Wallace’s full comments on Hegseth’s news conference in the clip at the top.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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