Pete Hegseth Says ‘The Sooner David Ellison Takes Over’ CNN ‘the Better’ in Slamming Outlet’s Report That Trump Administration ‘Underestimated’ Iran Attack’s Impact on Strait of Hormuz

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is rooting for David Ellison‘s Paramount Skydance to close its $111 billion deal to acquire CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery as soon as possible, as Hegseth lashed out at the news network over a report about the Trump administration’s Iran war.

At a press briefing Friday, Hegseth claimed that a CNN report saying the Trump administration “underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz” was “fake news.”

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“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said at the briefing.

A spokesperson for CNN said, “We stand by our reporting.”

The CNN article in question, first published Thursday, reported that “the Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. military strikes while planning the ongoing operation.” The report cited “multiple sources familiar with the matter.” According to the CNN report, Trump’s national security team “failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration.”

Trump’s preference of “leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to U.S.-Israeli strikes by closing the strait,” CNN reported.

Other news outlets have reported that the Trump administration had miscalculated the risks involved in attacking Iran. The New York Times, for example, published a story March 10 that said, “In the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, President Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets as a short-term concern that should not overshadow the mission to decapitate the Iranian regime.”

With Ellison’s Paramount pending deal to buy WBD, staffers at CNN have expressed fears that Paramount Skydance will steer the network’s coverage to be less critical of President Trump and his administration.

Ellison last fall acquired The Free Press, headed by former NYT opinion section staff editor Bari Weiss, and put Weiss in charge of CBS News editorial — resulting in significant turmoil within the organization. One departing producer at “CBS Evening News” wrote in a farewell memo to colleagues that under the new regime, stories may be “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”

Weiss is expected to have a role in overseeing CNN once the Paramount-WBD deal closes. Ellison has maintained that CNN will remain an editorially independent news organization.

The editorial independence of CNN “will absolutely be maintained,” Ellison said in a CNBC interview last week. “It’s maintained at CBS. It’ll be maintained at CNN. And, really, who we want to talk to is the 70% of Americans and really around the world that identify as center-left, as center-right. And we want to be in the truth business. We want to be in the trust business. And that’s not going to change.”

Ellison said that “CNN is an incredible brand with an incredible team. And we absolutely believe in, you know, the independence that needs to be maintained obviously for those incredible journalists, and we want to support that going forward.”