CNN Host Brutally Calls Out Fake Trump Post Live on Air

Politics admin July 9, 2026 0 Comments

CNN Host Brutally Calls Out Fake Trump Post Live on Air

CNN host Erin Burnett has called out President Donald Trump for posting a 13-month-old photo that he claimed was taken as part of his restarted retaliatory military strikes on Iran.

Trump, 80, was headed back to the White House from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday. Trump flew an older version of Air Force One for “old time’s sake” from Turkey to the Royal Air Force Mildenhall, before switching to his $400 million Qatar-gifted plane to return to Washington.

While Trump was posting from the air to show off a new photo of the “revamped” White House and recycle insults aimed at California Governor Gavin Newsom, an hour earlier, he had posted 12 videos and photos that appeared to show strikes on Iran.

Central Command said in a statement Wednesday that the U.S. had resumed its strikes against Iran “to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Before departing his NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said that he no longer wants to negotiate with Iran because they are “scum” after the Middle East country targeted three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as hitting U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Trump then appeared to spiral on Truth Social, posting a string of pictures and videos in just one hour.

However, speaking on CNN’s OutFront on Wednesday, host Erin Burnett pointed out that one post Trump shared, of smoke rising from a fuel depot after a military strike, was actually taken in June 2025, months before his war with Iran began on February 28, this year.

Trump shared the post, originally shared by the X account Open Source Intel, and added his own caption, “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!”

He then shared the image again, this time cropped in with no words.

It was also shared by the White House, which repeated Trump’s own caption, putting it in quotation marks.

However, on CNN Burnett pointed out that the image “is actually an altered image from what appears to be an Israeli strike in June of last year. So there‘s a lot of confusion about what‘s being posted and the accuracy.”

The photo is part of a series from Getty showing “fire and smoke” rising into the sky “after an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot” on June 15, 2025. It was used in a number of news stories internationally at the time.

Open Source Intel posted a correction on its account on Wednesday night, saying, “We posted an image of a strike that circulated in Iranian accounts that was inaccurately attributed to tonight. Our mistake…caught and corrected.“

A statement added, “Unfortunately it was widely shared before we had the chance to make the correction.”

The original post, which has now been deleted on its account, claimed the photo was taken in Chabahar, while the Shahran oil depot is located in northwestern Tehran. Trump’s posts remain public at the time of publishing

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

Trump resumed posting war imagery and videos, sharing a 30-second video seemingly capturing explosions filmed at a distance at a facility behind barbed wire, and also reposting a photo from the OSINT Defender X account of an explosion it said was at the Iranshahr Airport in Iran.

The new attacks on Iran followed Trump’s claim that the Memorandum of Understanding he had negotiated to bring a ceasefire to the war was over.

Trump was infuriated after Iran had targeted ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for transportation of oil.