'Fool's errand': Ex-Trump aide warns Hegseth he is making latest scandal worse
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in the first Trump administration, had a warning to Defense secretary Pete Hegseth and other leaders to back off their attacks on the public for wanting more information on the Iran attacks.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the U.S. "obliterated" the Iranian nuclear facilities in last weekend's bombings, despite a lack of evidence. Thursday, Hegseth gave what CNN anchor Sara Sidner called an "extraordinary" press conference, where he accused the media of "spinning" a preliminary report "to try to cause doubt and manipulate the...public mind, over whether or not our brave pilots were successful."
Griffin told CNN that Hegseth's press conference was performative in order to please Trump, who staged his own attack on the media at Wednesday's NATO summit.
"Hegseth knew who he was performing for," Griffin began. "His job was to attack the media and to defend this as the most successful operation."
Griffin then admonished the administration to slow down and not be so quick to claim absolute victory over the strikes until all of the intelligence reports are out, not just the one from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
"I would encourage the White House take a beat," Griffin said. "You're going to get more assessments. You're going to hear from the Israelis. The Europeans will very likely do their own assessments. We've heard from one of 17 intel agencies with this DIA report. Being almost overly argumentative and defensive is making it look like a bigger story than it needs to be, because all indications point to...this very likely set the Iranians back significantly.
"And I'd also remind folks, 79% of Americans believe that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. So, attacking the public for wanting to have answers to questions about how successful this was is such a fool's errand. We actually just simply want to know, is the world safer today or is it not?"