There are times where the dynamic between President Trump and CNN seems exactly the same as it was in 2017.
Late Monday afternoon in the Oval Office, President Trump took questions from the media regarding his announcement that another U.S. military strike on Iran would take place later that night. CNN's Kaitlin Collins managed to ask two questions from the time CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper picked up coverage, late into the first hour of his show, in time to catch Trump rip CNN as "fake news", something Tapper would later dispute, calling that accusation and others made by Trump "lies".
Tapper threw it to Trump, claiming that we are "on the verge of another war with Iran". Soon Collins would ask the first of two her two questions to Trump.
COLLINS: "Mr. President, you noted the United States is bombing Iran again. I mean, you've been bombing Iran for months now. Is this just the new normal for the American people?
TRUMP: Well, you know, we're in Vietnam for 19 years. We're here for four months. So I think we've done a lot. We've knocked out their Navy in a period of one month.... Their air force is nonexistent.... We knocked out most of their missiles, most of their drones.....This is almost a military skirmish.
Trump's answer to Collins went on for 2 and a half minutes, before she asked him about his promise to be reimbursed by countries for protecting the Strait of Hormuz.
TRUMP: Yeah, I want to be reimbursed because we're protecting a very rich portion of the world. We're spending money. And so what we've done is we are going to be reimbursed for protection.
Trump would eventually go back to listing our military successes against Iran.
TRUMP: So four months ago, these people had military that was very strong, by far the strongest, probably in the Middle East. They were called the bully of the Middle East. Now they don't have a Navy....They had 230 airplanes attack planes. They're all gone. They had tremendous radar. It's all gone. They had tremendous anti-aircraft. It's all gone. Sadly, their leadership is all gone.
Then Trump ripped the media and specifically CNN for skipping the good news, which ends up being "fake news," because they only talk about the bad news, as they see it.
TRUMP: And then you read fake news like your network, CNN, which is fake news. You read them, you have them say, well, actually, aren't they doing quite well?
He continued, noting how Iran's inflation rate is over 300%, how they've killed over 50,000 protesters in their country, and again stated that they have no military, before turning back to the media.
TRUMP: All they have is fake news because the fake news would rather see us lose the war than win the war, which is really treasonous in a certain way. So we're doing another very major attack tonight.
When the presser was over moments later, Tapper turned to White House correspondent Kristen Holmes, and addressed Trump's "lying" criticism:
TAPPER: Kristen, before I come to you, I just want to say everything the President just said about CNN is completely false. Nobody at CNN is saying that Iran is doing well, and nobody at CNN is rooting for Iran to win this war. I don't know why the President continues to say these things. I don't know if he believes them, but they're all lies.
HOLMES: It was clear during that, that he's frustrated and that he was trying to filibuster to not take any more questions about Iran.
Frustrated? Filibustering? From what viewers saw in those 10 minutes of coverage, Trump did take questions. He did not have to, but he did, and took two from Collins.
Another possibility is that he has been watching CNN since the war began. If Trump has been watching, he may have seen Jim Sciutto claim cease fire violations, "in both directions", or Jake Tapper himself object when Trump called Iranian leaders "loco and crazy."
He may have seen New Jersey Democrat Senator Cory Booker claim 'unconditional surrender' by Trump to Iran, while calling Trump a "criminal", with no pushback from Phil Mattingly, or CNN's Mathew Chance reporting from Iran, quoting an Iranian who called the conflict, "Trump's War", or Erin Burnett editing a clip, setting up Rep. Seth Moulton to call for the death penalty for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. This is CNN!
