Trump, Hegseth Slam News coverage of the US Intel Report

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday tried to counteract a preliminary intelligence evaluation of the United States that the attack against three Iranian nuclear facilities did limited damage when claiming the news of the report degraded the B-2 pilots that eliminated the bombs.

Speaking at a press conference, since he was ready to leave the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump said the pilots are “devastated” by the suggestion that strikes were not a complete success.

He was asked several times on Wednesday about the initial evaluation of the Defense Intelligence Agency that the bombings of Natanz’s facilities, Isfahan and Fordo probably delayed Iran’s nuclear program for only a few months. He acknowledged the reception of the report, but said he was incomplete.

He retreated the journalists asking questions about it, repeating his claim that Iran’s nuclear program was “erased”, and changed the focus on the pilots who carried out the strike.

“You should praise those people instead of trying to find out doing trying to go and get me. You are hurting those people,” Trump told reporters.

Later on Wednesday, in a real social position, he said that Hegseth would hold a press conference on Thursday morning “to fight for the dignity of our great American drivers.”

“They felt terribly! Fortunately for them and, as usual, only with the purpose of degrading President Donald J. Trump,” he said in part. “The press conference will be interesting and irrefutable.”

The president said in his press conference from the Netherlands that he had received a call from Missouri, where the pilots are based on the intelligence report and the news about it, saying that they had been told that they were “devastated, because they were trying to minimize the attack.”

“I talked to one of them. He said: ‘Lord, we arrived at the site. He was perfect. He was dead,’ because they don’t understand the false news,” Trump said.

The Pentagon sent questions from ABC News to the White House.

Trump added to the pilots who “were devastated. They put their lives on the line.”

Since Saturday’s attack, Trump and his officials have repeatedly praised the B-2 pilots for the mission, but have intensified referring them as part of the setback on Wednesday. Heghseth, standing next to Trump, arrived at the microphone to discuss reporters and news points “do not care what the troops think.”

“These pilots, these refueling, these combatants, these aerial defenders, the skill and courage that was needed to go to the enemy territory that fly 36 hours on behalf of the American people of the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone at this audience can understand,” said Hegseth.

At the same time, Hegseth and Trump minimize the initial findings of the damage.

“The report said what he said and was fine. It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. They should not have issued a report until they did, but we have the information,” Trump said.

Previously, Trump cited an Israeli intelligence report that insisted on evaluating the “strike against Fordo destroyed the critical infrastructure of the site and caused the enourtable enhancing installation.”

Military officers have said that there is no doubt that the sites suffered significant damage, but that an “battle damage” would take time to complete, since no Western officials have been able to personally inspect the sites until Wednesday.

The director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said in a statement published in X on Wednesday night that “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed” and also criticizing the media. A source with knowledge of Gabbard’s evaluation told ABC News that his description came from the new American intelligence.

“The average of propaganda has deployed its usual tactics: selectively release portions of illegally classified intelligence evaluations (which intentionally leaving aside the fact that the evaluation was written with” low confidence “) to try to undermine the decisive leadership of President Trump and the brave military safely safely, he published partly.

Hegseth said that preliminary reports and images spoke for themselves.

“Then, if you want to do an evaluation of what happened in Fordo, it is better to get a large shovel and return very deep because Iran’s nuclear program is erased and someone somewhere is trying to filter something to say: ‘Oh, with little confidence, we think it is perhaps moderate,” he said.

-ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson, Kelsey Walsh and Luis Martínez contributed to this report.