Trump Melts Down Over Reports That Iran Strikes Didn’t Accomplish Much

Multiple outlets have reported that the Trump administration’s claims that they “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities were slightly premature, causing the president to lash out on Monday.

“The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it. Only the Fake News would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible—And even they say they were ‘pretty well destroyed!’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Then he got personal, attacking specific networks and even purposefully misgendering CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is gay. “Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN, Dumb Brian L. Roberts, Chairman of ‘Con’cast, Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News, and always, the Losers of, again, Concast’s NBC Fake News. It never ends with the sleazebags in the Media, and that’s why their Ratings are at an ALL TIME LOW—ZERO CREDIBILITY!”

No one is denying that the Iranian nuclear sites took substantial damage. But Israeli and U.S. military reports on the bombing contradict Trump’s claim of complete and utter obliteration. Israeli officials told The New York Times that the Fordo nuclear site, buried deep in a mountain, was not completely destroyed and that the Iranians had moved nuclear materials like uranium out of the site before the bombing. A U.S. military official said the same, admitting that not even 12 bunker-busters could level Fordo, even though the site is certainly out of commission for the time being. On Sunday, even Vice President JD Vance admitted Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is still intact.

Trump is obviously playing strongman here, embellishing Israeli and U.S. strikes that have thus far killed over 400 civilians, damaged infrastructure, and may not even stop the Iranian government from continuing its nuclear program. All this is distracting Americans from his broken promise of ending endless wars and the ongoing domestic issues, like his retaliatory tariffs and his impending controversial spending bill. And when the media deviates from his winning narrative, he stoops to homophobic remarks and name calling. Very presidential.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new defense partnership Monday between some of the United States’s biggest allies.

Carney said on X that he’d met with European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to “launch a new security and defence partnership.”

The agreement opens the door for Canada into Europe’s $173 billion defense procurement plan, according to The New York Times. The deal blocks signatories from spending more than 35 percent of funds dedicated to any one project on products from non-signatory states—meaning there will be limits on purchasing American-made defense systems, artillery, and other materials.

This agreement comes as Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs threaten to upend global supply chains, potentially threatening domestic weapons manufacturing, and Iran begins to retaliate against the United States over its targeting of the country’s nuclear facilities over the weekend.

“In the face of rising global threats, Canada is building ever-stronger alliances,” Carney wrote. “Today’s historic agreement will build up defence capabilities across Canada and the European Union, protect our people and our values, and create strong opportunities for Canadian defence industries at home.”

After the meeting in Brussels, von der Leyen said that the allies’ new security and defense agreement was “the most comprehensive we’ve ever concluded,” according to the Times.

“As the saying goes, hard times reveal true friends,” she added.

As far as true friends go, Trump is certainly not one, and the hard times she referred to are the direct result of his actions in office. So, it should hardly come as a surprise that Canada has sought other allies as the U.S. pulls away.

Trump previously warned Canada that unless the country joined the United States, he would charge them $61 billion for protection under his new “Golden Dome” space weapons system.

Donald Trump just whacked the ball back to Russia with a string of eyebrow-furrowing comments on nuclear arms.

On Sunday, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media that Russia’s “production of nuclear weapons” would continue.

“A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” he noted.

So Trump took to Truth Social Monday to play out the delicate foreign exchange, asking if Medvedev was “casually throwing around the ‘N word,’” as in, nuclear.

“Did he really say that or, is it just a figment of my imagination? If he did say that, and, if confirmed, please let me know, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said. “The ‘N word’ should not be treated so casually.”

“I guess that’s why Putin’s ‘THE BOSS,’” he continued.

The U.S. president then opted against de-escalating the rhetoric, choosing instead to bring up America’s nuclear submarine fleet, which he claimed are “20 years advanced over the pack.”

“They are the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built, and just launched the 30 Tomahawks—All 30 hit their mark perfectly,” he wrote.

Without congressional approval, Trump directed airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities Saturday. The attack damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, with damage estimates expected to be “very significant,” according to International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi.

The action sparked backlash from some Republican lawmakers, including Representative Thomas Massie, who argued that war with Iran was not constitutional. Massie also chastized House Speaker Mike Johnson for practically handing over Congress’s sole authority to declare war to the White House, questioning online why the leading Republican lawmaker did not “call us back from vacation to vote on military action if there was a serious threat to our country.”

Massie offered Trump a full-throated endorsement in the 2024 race on the basis that he would prevent “needless wars abroad.”

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, condemned the American attack on Iran, and said that “accepting the recent U.S. actions would undermine all the progress the international community has made in the field of nuclear non-proliferation,” according to Middle East Monitor.

Florida’s extreme abortion ban almost killed Republican Representative and House Pro-Life Caucus co-chair Kat Cammack. But instead of using her near-death experience to shed light on her party’s bad policy, she blamed “the left” for “fearmongering” and refused to call her operation an abortion.

Cammack told The Wall Street Journal that in May of last year, when she was five weeks pregnant, doctors found that her child’s embryo grew outside of the uterus where the fallopian tube meets, a life-threatening location. “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you,” a doctor told her, adding that the embryo had no heartbeat. The emergency room doctors and nurses determined that Cammack required a shot of methotrexate to terminate her potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.  

But Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which had just been enacted, made those medical professionals hesitant to save Cammack’s life because they feared they’d lose their licenses, or even be prosecuted and sent to jail. After hours of arguments and one unsuccessful call to Governor Ron DeSantis’s office, the doctors conceded and gave Cammack the lifesaving care. Months later, Florida lawmakers clarified that doctors could act in cases such as Cammack’s because ectopic pregnancies were not abortions in their eyes. They refused to define an ectopic pregnancy.

Cammack, who is now pregnant again and due in August, is convinced that liberal rhetoric about abortion bans that are both restrictive and ambiguously worded is to blame, rather than the legislation itself. 

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” Cammack told the Journal. “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.” 

Not every pregnancy complication is black and white, and treating it as such causes medical professionals to live in fear and puts their patients at greater risk of dying. 

Donald Trump’s decision to drag the United States into a war in the Middle East was all about how it would look on television.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Trump had been effusive about Israel’s sweeping military operation in Iran, targeting the latter country’s ballistic missile and nuclear facilities, military officials, and nuclear scientists.

Ever the entertainer, Trump “asked an ally how the Israeli strikes were ‘playing’ on Friday June 13.” “He said that ‘everyone’ was telling him he needed to get more involved,” the Times reported, but it’s not clear who exactly Trump was talking about.

The next day, Trump’s team reportedly paid close attention to how his supporters were responding to Israel’s military campaign. Meanwhile, Trump kept his eyes glued to Fox News as it aired “wall-to-wall praise” of Israel’s operation and hosted guests urging the president to wade into the conflict.

Several of Trump’s advisers were reportedly lamenting the loss of Tucker Carlson, who’d come out strongly against U.S. involvement in Iran, from his gig on the president’s favorite channel because it meant Trump didn’t hear any opposition, according to the Times.

Last week, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Fox News had gone all in on attacking Iran.

“Trump’s favorite TV network has staked out the pro-war position—and it isn’t making as much room for debate,” Stetler wrote. “Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump’s ego—simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen.”

Fox News host Mark Levin, whom Trump recently appointed to his revamped Homeland Security Advisory Council, screamed about a battle of “good versus evil” during one broadcast last week.

Although Trump postured as if he opposed Israel’s strike beforehand, he told reporters it was “excellent” and “very successful,” and heavily implied that he’d been involved in some way. Israeli officials have claimed that Trump had even given the “green light” for a strike beforehand.

Iran announced Monday that it has begun its retaliation against the United States after Donald Trump bombed three nuclear facilities over the weekend.

Iranian missiles flew toward U.S. bases in both Qatar and Iraq, while sirens were also heard in Bahrain and Kuwait. Israeli sources said Iran fired 10 missiles at Qatar and one missile at Iraq, CNN reported.

The Qatar-bound missiles targeted the Al Udeid air base, which houses U.S. troops. Iranian state TV announced the news, calling the attack “a mighty and successful response by the armed forces of Iran to America’s aggression.”

Shortly thereafter, Qatar said it reserves the right to respond directly. No casualties have been reported thus far. Three Iranian officials told The New York Times that they had given advance notice to Qatar of the strikes in order to minimize casualties, making it more of a symbolic retaliation.

Israel continued its strikes in Tehran on Monday, bombing Evin Prison, where the Islamic Republic detains many political prisoners. The IDF also once again warned the 10 million residents of the capital to evacuate, stressing that they should stay away from weapons production centers and military bases.

This story has been updated.

Republicans are bending over backward to justify Donald Trump’s attack on Iran.

Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, North Carolina Representative Pat Harrigan tried to explain away U.S. involvement in the Middle East conflict by claiming that the Trump administration was promoting peace through war.

“We’re trying to lower the temperature of global conflict while simultaneously kind of raising it here in order to lower it,” Harrigan said, agreeing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Iran should not retaliate. “It would be Iran’s worst decision … to come back and attack American troops.”

By Monday afternoon, Iran had launched six missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, reported Reuters.

Despite its previous attestations against sending the U.S. to war, it is not clear when Republican leadership will align the party consensus with national opinion and condemn U.S. involvement in Iran.

Trump enjoyed widespread Republican support on the 2024 campaign trail due to an apparently false belief that the MAGA leader would not pursue war—but some of that support is beginning to wane, forging yet another rift in the conservative party.

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie is one of a handful of Republicans to recently turn on the president while Trump fanned the flames of combat between Israel and Iran.

“Let’s not pretend any President has authority to engage in a war without a vote and without funding from Congress. The Constitution requires we vote,” Massie wrote on X Friday.

Massie also chastized House Speaker Mike Johnson for practically handing over Congress’s sole authority to declare war to the White House, questioning online why the leading Republican lawmaker did not “call us back from vacation to vote on military action if there was a serious threat to our country.”

But the president has already turned his extraordinarily well-funded political machine against his naysayers. By Sunday, Trump and his allies had formed a super PAC aimed at kicking Massie out of national politics for good.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene somehow continues to be one of the most coherent and consistent right-wing voices against the U.S. war on Iran.

The MAGA hard-liner lambasted President Trump and his foreign policy on Monday, accusing him of betraying his true supporters in a “complete bait and switch” by expanding U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

“I spent millions of my own money and TRAVELED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY campaigning for President Trump and his MAGA agenda and his promises. And Trump’s MAGA agenda included these key promises: NO MORE FOREIGN WARS. NO MORE REGIME CHANGE. WORLD PEACE. And THIS is what the people voted for. Only 6 months in and we are back into foreign wars, regime change, and world war 3,” Taylor Greene wrote on X.

“It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts, and neocon tv personalities that MAGA hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS! After the bombs were dropped, we were told ‘complete success’ and Iran’s nuclear capabilities were totally wiped out. Then it quickly turned to Iran’s nuclear facilities ‘partially damaged’ and now it’s ‘we don’t know where their enriched uranium is.’”

Greene continued, calling for a world in which her Gen Z children were free of continuous foreign war.

“I am FIGHTING for them to have a future where they can afford to buy a home, afford insurance, invest for retirement, enjoy life, retain their God given freedoms, afford to raise a family under their Christian faith, not be in debt, safety and security, AND NOT HAVE OUR OWN TAX PAYER FUNDED GOVERNMENT DESTROY IT ALL. Contrary to [what] brainwashed Democrat boomers think and protest about, Trump is not a king, MAGA is not a cult, and I can and DO have my own opinion.”

Taylor Greene has been speaking out against the U.S. war on Iran for days now, along with other right-wing voices like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones. This dynamic once again demonstrates the growing split between traditional D.C. neocons and the deep MAGA conservatives at the heart of Trump’s support system.

Trump has floated regime change in Iran nonetheless. At least 430 Iranian civilians have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes so far.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not impressed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sudden ability to keep his mouth shut about U.S. military plans.

Newsmax host Todd Starnes offered his congratulations to Hegseth Saturday for pulling off sweeping strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities without giving up the game.

“Not a single leak. Well done, @SecDef,” Starnes wrote in a post on X.

The New York Democrat didn’t see that as quite the cause for celebration.

“This is like applauding a grown man for being able to wipe their behind,” Cortez responded in a post on X. “Not exactly a vote of confidence.”

Earlier this year, Hegseth sent sensitive details about a U.S. military strike on Yemen to one Signal group chat that had the editor in chief of The Atlantic, and another chat that included his wife, brother, and attorney.

Hegseth’s Pentagon has become “consumed” by the search for leakers, according to Colin Caroll, who served as the chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary before being ousted as the result of a leak investigation. Some believe Caroll’s removal was motivated by an explosive power struggle between defense aides.

“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50 percent of it is probably a leak investigation,” Carroll said in April.

Iranian lawmakers are considering ending their cooperation with a U.N. nuclear watchdog in the wake of a U.S. attack on several key nuclear sites.

Iran’s Parliament is looking to pass a bill that would “suspend Iran’s cooperation” with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a global consortium focused on limiting the use of nuclear power for military purposes, “until we have objective guarantees of the professional behavior of this international organization,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said Monday.

“The world clearly saw that the Atomic Energy Agency has not fulfilled any of its obligations and has become a political tool,” he added.

For months, top American intelligence officials have said that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” In a June report, the Congressional Research Service underscored that “Tehran has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons at some point, but has halted its nuclear weapons program and has not mastered all of the necessary technologies for building such weapons.”

But in the days leading up to the Saturday night attack, Donald Trump flagrantly disregarded the advice of his key advisers, opting to believe another narrative instead.

“I don’t care what she said,” the president told reporters on Tuesday on Air Force One, referring to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s March testimony that Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon. “I think they were very close to having one.”

​​IAEA Director Rafael Grossi said that the damage dealt by America’s weekend airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was expected to be “very significant.”

Iran has argued that it is seeking uranium for peaceful purposes, such as expanding its nuclear energy program. It has undergone years of nuclear site inspections by the IAEA, and as of last week was allowing IAEA inspectors to remain in the country, according to Grossi.

The only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East is presumed to be Israel, which will not confirm or deny possessing what the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates are approximately 90 nuclear weapons.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, chastised Israel during an emergency U.N. Security Council Sunday for not being subject to the same IAEA inspections as a non-signatory on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty. The envoy condemned the American attack on Iran, and said that “accepting the recent U.S. actions would undermine all the progress the international community has made in the field of nuclear non-proliferation,” according to the Middle East Monitor.