White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Thursday, June 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)AP

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was roasted by social media users for her defense of President Donald Trump’s insults toward major news outlets over the U.S. strikes on Iran.

Trump has been railing against media outlets for reporting that the U.S. strikes on Iran only set the country’s nuclear program behind by a few months. The intel assessment, first reported by CNN, showed that the nuclear sites were not “obliterated,” like what Trump claimed them to be.

Keep Watching
1

Russlands Krieg in der Ukraine: Moskau greift mit Raketen und Shahed-Drohnen an – 10 ToteRusslands Krieg in der Ukraine: Moskau greift mit Raketen und Shahed-Drohnen an – 10 Tote

In heated remarks on Wednesday, Leavitt loudly argued on Fox News that CNN’s reporting was inaccurate despite many news outlets finding the same conclusion. Trump spent much of the NATO summit railing against media organizations, including CNN, for reporting that the nuclear sites were not completely destroyed.

“No other president in history could have ever dreamed of such a success, and that’s exactly why the fake news media is now trying to demean and undermine the president, and we’ve seen this playbook be run before you have hostile actors within the intelligence community who lick— who illegally leak bits and pieces of an intelligence assessment to push a fake news narrative, and that’s what the CNN story was yesterday,” Leavitt told Fox News.

“The American public are smarter than this, and they should know the truth. President Trump completely and totally obliterated the capability of Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, and the world is safer today because of his historic efforts,” she added.

Leavitt was roasted on the social media platform X for her defense of the president and echoing his claims.

“This is truly both a DANGEROUS and INSANE lie. Because they did not obliterate anything & it allows the Iranians to quickly regroup and continue exactly what they were doing before, all because their orange faced cult leader tells fantastical lies they need to back up endlessly,” one political account wrote on X.

Another user pushed back on Leavitt’s claim that the White House “debunked” CNN’s reporting.

MeidasTouch podcast host Fred Wellman wrote: “No it hasn’t. Pathetic.”

New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent suggested that Leavitt made false claims because she knows she can get set up with a job at Fox News after her role in the administration is over.

“A big reason Karoline Leavitt knows she can get away with towering buffooneries like claiming this is the greatest thing any American president has ever done is that she can count on getting accepted into polite DC society and given a lucrative Fox gig after all this is over,” he wrote on X.

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) also pushed back on whether Trump’s decision was a “success.” He wrote on X that the U.S. needs to verify what happened to Iran’s enriched uranium and determine whether the bombs hit their intended targets in the strikes.

“In other words, things that require eyes on the ground and, to use a technical term that this administration is not familiar with, ‘intelligence’. The fact that they are claiming it was a success because bomb went boom is a tell, in this circumstance,” he wrote on X.

Multiple news outlets reported on Tuesday that the early U.S. assessment of the U.S. strikes on Iran did not completely destroy the nuclear sites. Trump has grown frustrated by this reporting, taking to his Truth Social platform to denounce the reports and lash out at CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand.

The reported initial assessment is at odds with Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the strikes completely destroyed the Iranian nuclear sites.

Trump announced that the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend after he warned for days that Iran was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. His decision was condemned by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with many questioning why Trump got the U.S. involved in another Middle East conflict.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use. The U.S. and others assessed prior to the U.S. strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.