Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” host Jake Tapper said it was narcissistic for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to say the network’s coverage of U.S. soldiers who died is trying to make the president look bad.
Tapper said, “At a press conference this morning at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the rather shocking claim that the only reason members of the news media report prominently welcome. More on the deaths of those six fallen American service members is because of some sort of political vendetta that we in the news media have against President Trump.”
He continued, “Obviously, that’s just false, and it represents a truly warped way of looking at the world and how Americans view the sacrifices made by these brave, all-American service members. It’s also, frankly, historically illiterate. The news media has always covered service members killed in action prominently because they paid the ultimate price for our nation.”
When asked about Hegseth’s comments, Leavitt said, “You and your network know that you take every single thing this administration says and tries to use it to make the president look bad.”
Tapper added, “It really is the height of solipsism and narcissism to think that our coverage of fallen warriors has anything to do with how we cover a president. I’m just utterly shocked that Hegseth and now Karoline Leavitt are saying it. It’s just, I don’t even really know what to say. It’s so offensive. I don’t care what they think about us. It’s so offensive to the families who deserve coverage.”
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