CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward on Wednesday slammed President Donald Trump and his administration for using pop culture-laden memes to downplay the gravity of his deadly war on Iran, saying it boosts “the worst stereotypes about America.”

The Peabody Award winner joined “The Late Show” via satellite from Iraq, telling host Stephen Colbert that the Iran war is “particularly disconcerting” as more than a dozen countries are involved now and nobody can tell “how far the repercussions will reach.”

“Obviously as a journalist I’m really not supposed to say this, but I feel deeply ashamed,” she told Colbert. “I think it belies a staggering lack of humility and, frankly, it doesn’t really matter so much what I think or feel about it. It matters how people here feel about it.”

Ward continued, “It matters how people in Iran feel about it.”

The Trump White House has shared several videos in recent days that combine real footage of U.S. strikes on Iran with clips from two of the most popular video game series, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, as well as from TV shows and movies, including the 2008 comedy “Tropic Thunder.”

“And I think it just plays into the worst stereotypes about America and how America wields its power and what America cares about,” Ward told Colbert. “And for so many in this region who have just felt dehumanized and humiliated for decades now, yeah, it’s just, it’s a lot.”

The Iran war has already cost at least seven U.S. military service members their lives and killed more than 1,200 Iranians, including dozens of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who died in an airstrike on a girls school in Minab that killed at least 175 people.

The results of a preliminary military investigation Wednesday reportedly confirmed the U.S. was likely responsible for the deadly strike that killed Iranian schoolgirls, but when asked about the ongoing inquiry later that day, Trump said plainly, “I don’t know about it.”

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an airstrike toward the start of the attacks.

Trump’s White House has appeared to have no qualms over the course of his second term about posting footage of lethal airstrikes, and shared clips on social media last year of suspected drug smugglers and a group of alleged Houthi rebels being bombed to death.

The president launched U.S. strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. He has stated a number of reasons for the war, including preventing Iran from rebuilding its nuclear weapons program, despite Trump himself announcing just last year that these facilities had been “totally obliterated.” He has also cited regime change and freedom for Iranians.

While announcing his attacks, Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government.” However, continuing U.S.-Israeli strikes as well as Iranian warnings that its country’s security forces would shoot civilians who protest in the streets have discouraged such efforts.

Ward told Colbert that “for all the declarations from the U.S., from President Trump, from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about Iranians, ‘Take to the street, take your country back,’ the few Iranians that we’ve been able to get in touch with … are mostly hiding.”

“They’re hiding from relentless bombardment,” she said, adding: “And for those ordinary Iranian people, I can only imagine how horrifying it is right now to have just so little sense of where this is going and what the metric is for victory for the United States.”

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