America’s most faithful left-wing journalist strikes again – and President Trump is hitting back at her hard.

CNN’s 33-year-old Pentagon correspondent Natasha Bertrand, who’s made a name for herself among conservatives as a despised shill for neocon forces in Washington DC for years, dropped her own bomb Tuesday when she reported that the US strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites were basically a dud.

They ‘did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it,’ wrote Bertrand who also appeared on air to discuss her findings.

Bertrand is also known for ginning up the infamous Steele Dossier and authored the notorious October 2020 Politico report stating that the Hunter Biden laptop was ‘Russian disinformation’ which included mention of the 50 ‘former senior intelligence officials’ who agreed with her claim.

Trump erupted in a fury on his Truth Social account Wednesday afternoon. ‘Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN!’ Trump wrote.

‘I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’ 

‘She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit ‘pay dirt’ — TOTAL OBLITERATION! 

The former president torched CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand in a blistering Truth Social post, demanding she be ‘thrown out like a dog’ and accusing her of spreading lies to discredit U.S. fighter pilots 

Pictured: A person stands near the site of an Iranian missile strike that hit a residential area on 24 June, in Be’er Sheva, southern Israel, 25 June 2025, during a US-mediated ceasefire between Iran and Israel

‘She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also took her own potshot at Bertrand’s claims.

On Thursday she tore into her during her press briefing, saying: ‘This is a reporter who has been unfortunately used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives. She should be ashamed of herself.

‘That’s not what reporting is. Journalism is trying to find the facts and the truth. And this week we saw this same reporter being used to push a fake narrative to try to undermine the President of the United States and more importantly the brave fighter pilots who conducted one of the most successful operations in United States history.

‘And I think the American people fully know that this operation was a complete and total success.’

For some, it was deja vu all over again. Bertrand, a Vassar College graduate, has come under fire since almost the start of her career in 2014 when she joined Business Insider as an intern.

‘Natasha Bertrand did such a great job of lying and spreading disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop that CNN promoted her,’ conservative pundit Maze wrote on X Wednesday.

‘Natasha has been really busy this week pushing false narratives so she should be getting a promotion to CNN Chief Propagandist in no time.’

‘Guys, if Natasha ‘Fusion GPS’ Bertrand is being fed a low-confidence intel report by Intel operatives, go ahead and ignore it,’ wrote Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist Wednesday.

Back in February 2020, Erik Wemple at the Washington Post slammed Bertrand for writing about the infamous Steele Dossier while still at Business Insider and continuing what he characterized as chronically dubious reporting about alleged Russian interference as she climbed the media ladder.

Wemple said Bertrand had used her Swiss-cheese filled reporting about the Steele dossier to ‘bootstrap’ herself into a gig as an MSNBC pundit after joining The Atlantic as a staff writer in 2018.

‘With winks and nods from MSNBC hosts, Bertrand heaped credibility on the dossier — which was published in full by BuzzFeed News in January 2017 — in repeated television appearances,’ Wemple wrote.

‘Her written work has appeared on Business Insider, the Atlantic and Politico, where she is now a national security reporter. Along the way, she bootstrapped her punditry into a contributor’s role on MSNBC.’

Bertrand became a national security reporter for Politico in 2019, covering US intelligence and the Trump impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Her arrival at CNN in April 2021 as a national security and Pentagon correspondent was not met by enthusiasm in some quarters. Journalist Glenn Greenwald has complained her being a mouthpiece for the Pentagon for more than three years — as have many others.

‘Arguably no single reporter has contributed more to the deranged and paranoid national security fantasies of the center-left than Natasha Bertrand,’ National Review writer Luke Thompson wrote on X in April 2021 after CNN hired Bertrand.

‘She’s an embarrassment to her profession and will, therefore, fit right in at CNN,’ Thompson wrote, adding that ‘she was one of the progenitors of the ‘Russian disinfo’ lie about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and wrote this article, which is typical of her mealy-mouthed and dishonest craft.’

Complicating Bertrand’s latest controversy is that the media so far has only Leavitt’s insistence that the nuclear facilities were ‘obliterated,’ or people like Bertrand claiming that they weren’t at all.

The prison attack was one among several Israeli strikes across Tehran on June 23, including on Basij HQ and the countdown clock in Palestine Square

Pictured: Rescuers search through the rubble of a damaged section of Evin Prison following an Israeli strike the day before, in Tehran, Iran on Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Bertrand’s arrival at CNN in April 2021 as a national security and Pentagon correspondent was not met by enthusiasm in some quarters. Journalist Glenn Greenwald has complained her being a mouthpiece for the Pentagon for more than three years — as have many others.

A possibly better sourced and detailed story was published Wednesday by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh who was one of the few if only to report last Friday that the US would bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.

Hersh’s story titled ‘The Burial Plan’ cited intelligence sources telling him that US-Israeli forces deliberately went with a plan to bury and seal off the sites so nobody could get to them – meaning the enriched uranium is still there but no longer possible to get to under the rubble.

CNN swiftly fired back with a strong defense of Bertrand.

‘CNN stands 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,’ a spokesman told The Hill.

‘CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it.’

‘However, we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest.’

Bertrand did not return an email from the Daily Mail requesting comment.