Trump Keeps Siding With Israeli Intelligence Over the Pentagon

American military intelligence found that President Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities failed to “completely and totally obliterate” the sites like Trump promised they did. Instead of admitting his folly, Trump cherry-picked an Israeli source that better fit his narrative.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that a battle damage assessment by the Pentagon found that the missile attacks only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. A day later, the president pushed back by pointing to a report from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission that fully supported his rhetoric that his strikes on Iran were a complete and total success. 

“The devastating US strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” the report said, directly contradicting the U.S. intelligence assessment. “This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.”

That the president of the United States is deferring to the intelligence of the country who’s begging us to keep funding their unprovoked war on Iran rather than our own, only to make himself look better, is deeply troubling. Trump was asked to clarify at Tuesday’s NATO Summit: Was the Pentagon’s own assessment totally wrong, and, actually, how successful were these strikes?

“Is the [U.S.] intelligence correct or is the intelligence wrong?” a reporter asked. 

“Well the intelligence was very inconclusive. The intelligence says ‘we don’t know, it could have been very severe.’ That’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct,” Trump said. “But I think … it was very severe; it was obliteration.… Iran said, ‘let’s stop this.’” 

It seems clear that the president’s strikes—which he expected to somehow neatly conclude Israel’s aggression towards Iran—missed their mark, only prolonging the conflict further. Now he’s scrambling, even trusting the word of the nation that dragged us into this over that of his own military leaders.    

Trump consigliere Stephen Miller contributed to the ongoing meltdown over Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary with a nod to what’s known as the “great replacement theory.”

Miller has long elevated the racist right-wing conspiracy theory, which posits that liberal elites are ushering in immigrants to replace native-born Americans and thereby make electoral gains. In 2019, The Guardian reported that Miller, in emails with a writer for the far-right site Breitbart, “promoted racist fears of demographic replacement of white people by non-whites.”

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Miller reacted to news of the charismatic Democratic Socialist candidate’s swift and decisive victory—and broad appeal across a city long celebrated as a byword for immigration—by dusting off Old Reliable.

On Wednesday morning, Miller took to X, writing, “The commentary about NYC Democrats nominating an anarchist-socialist for Mayor omits one point: how unchecked migration fundamentally remade the NYC electorate. Democrats change politics by changing voters. That’s how you turn a city that defined US dominance into what it is now.”

In another post, Miller continued, “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.”

Mamdani actually performed better than Andrew Cuomo with white voters, but more of this from Miller’s ilk is sure to come, as those across the MAGA world and commentariat continue to succumb to what some online observers have dubbed “Mamdani derangement syndrome”—a common manifestation of which is, apparently, plain bigotry.

Donald Trump compared his strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities to a war-ending nuclear attack, while his own government has given an early assessment that the mission wasn’t the success he’s claimed.

During a press conference Wednesday at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump desperately defended his military strike in Iran, following the leak of an intelligence report from the Pentagon that said that the sites had not been completely destroyed.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war, this ended the war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now.”

While Trump may desire the grandeur of his own nuclear attack—he really should not, but obviously, it’s on his mind—it seems he may be a lot closer to former President George W. Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” blunder.

Within hours of the strike on Iran, Trump claimed that U.S. forces had “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the attack had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, according to multiple outlets.

When pressed on the report, Trump said the intelligence had been “very inconclusive,” but that because the report had said that “it could have been very severe,” he understood it to mean “obliteration.”

Just months ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon” when presenting the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment. Trump has repeatedly dismissed that finding, opting instead to believe Israeli intelligence. While speaking at The Hague, the president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”

A progressive won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday, sending the far-right media sphere into a tailspin.

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign platform was practically the opposite of the president’s, arguing for higher taxes on corporations and the ultrawealthy, pitching new green initiatives for public facilities, making the city an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary, and advocating for raising the city’s minimum wage. It also planned for “Trump-proofing NYC,” lobbying for countermeasures against Donald Trump’s ICE raids, skyrocketing prices under his tariff proposal, and saving vital social services for working New Yorkers.

So Trump’s allies did not take kindly to the news.

New York Representative Elise Stefanik derided Mamdani as a “radical, Defund-the-Police, Communist, raging Antisemite,” arguing that New York Governor Kathy Hochul and state Democrats had “fully embraced Marxism, antisemitism, anti-capitalism, and sheer insanity.”

“New Yorkers understand that Kathy Hochul and Far Left Socialist Democrats are destroying our great state with sanctuary state and defund the police policies, high taxes, and raging antisemitism combined with failed, ineffective, and bloated government paid for by hardworking New Yorkers,” Stefanik wrote on X.

“Voters will say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH next year,” Stefanik continued, threatening Hochul’s seat. “And mark my words Kathy Hochul, we are going to fire you in 2026 to SAVE NEW YORK.”

In a fundraising email sent prior to the primary results, Stefanik had accused Mamdani of being a “terrorist sympathizer.” Mamdani has caught heavy flak from conservatives and Zionists for supporting a nonviolent, Palestinian-led movement known as boycott, divestment, and sanctions, or BDS, that advocates for economic sanctions against Israel. During the mayoral debates, Mamdani’s connection to New York City’s Jewish community was thrown a bizarre curveball when he was asked, as a hypothetical mayor of New York City, if he would visit Israel.

In the wake of Mamdani’s win, far-right influencer Laura Loomer said that “there will be another 9/11 in NYC” and that Mamdani “will be to blame.” Charlie Kirk insinuated that Muslims shouldn’t hold public office because of the terrorist attack.

And conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson circulated an image of the burning Twin Towers, while baselessly accusing Mamdani of being a “Muslim jihadist.”

Donald Trump furiously pushed back Wednesday against reports that his surprise strike on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities hadn’t “completely and fully obliterated” them as he’s previously claimed.

While attending a NATO summit in The Hague, Trump attacked multiple news outlets that had reported the day before on a damning early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which found his strike on Iran hadn’t completely destroyed the country’s nuclear capabilities and instead only delayed it a few months. Once the president got going, he couldn’t stop.

“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum,” Trump said, referring to some reporters in the room. “CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick. And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

Trump, who regularly rails against the press, claimed he was only doing so on behalf of the service members who’d executed the strike.

“Very unfair to the pilots that risk their lives for our country, and then they get fake news New York Times and CNN make up a phony story to get some hits. That’s the only reason I care about it, because those pilots were so brave, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “They flew into the hornets’ nest and then they got hurt so badly by what the fake news wrote, and it was CNN, it was The New York Times, and they’re both disgusting, disgusting, really horrible groups of people.”

Trump then outright denied the findings of his own government’s report, once again opting for intelligence from a foreign government: Israel.

When asked whether he would attack Iran again if they rebuilt their facilities, Trump replied, “I’m not gonna have to worry about that. It’s gone for years.” The president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has opted to trust Israeli intelligence over U.S. intelligence. He repeatedly ignored the annual threat assessment produced by his own intelligence community, which found that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon,” opting to trust Israel instead.

Trump also tore into the outlets in a post on Truth Social Tuesday night. “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC,” he wrote.

But the Trump administration has been reluctant to meet the president’s absolute confidence of a successful strike. While Trump patted himself on the back for a mission accomplished, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said Sunday it was “way too early” to say whether the strike had actually been successful. That same day, Vice President JD Vance declined to confirm that Iran’s nuclear sites had been completely destroyed.