It's the media buzz meter with Howard Kurtz.

As the war in Iran rages on, President Trump seems increasingly unhappy, annoyed, I guess you would say, with some of the questions that he's getting from reporters.

And let me say right up front,

the questions that are being asked are legitimate questions,

they're not particularly confrontational.

And so I think, obviously, like any president,

certainly any president conducting a war,

and this goes back to LBJ and Richard Nixon having strained relations with the press corps during Vietnam.

You know, any administration wants the story told its way.

And one thing that is really beyond dispute, I put together my thoughts on this today for a column,

and this is how I led.

Story number one. The U.S. military has

devastated Iran and all but destroyed its military effectiveness. Period. Full stop. Everybody

knows that. Everybody recognizes that. There's no part of the coverage that disputes that however there are

ways in which iran is able to strike back in a much more limited ways of course but that's part of the

story now i did think you know a lot of people said and i agreed you know trump should have given a

prime time speech suddenly americans woke up and we were at war with Iran, all of that. But he's actually

more effective when he is holding one of these marathon press conferences as he did yesterday.

And there, he wasn't snapping at reporters. He was taking the questions and engaging and trying to deal with

them to the point where he acknowledged he doesn't know whether the son of Ayatollah Khomeini,

who was killed along with other leaders and those initial airstrikes, is dead or alive. He doesn't

know. Intelligence can't say.

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