United States President Donald Trump has suggested that those who leak information to the news media should be shot as punishment. Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, as he urged supporters to vote in the November 3 midterm elections. In the aftermath of the attack, several media outlets published findings from a preliminary report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
That report – which had not yet been released to the public – indicated that Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium away from the sites the US had bombed. It also suggested that the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more modest than what Trump had asserted. Trump, however, appeared to signal that the timing of the US attacks was among the leaked information.
He accused the news media of putting military members in danger, calling out The New York Times and CNN in particular. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.” Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media, and he has previously called for harsh punishment against any official who passes on confidential information to news outlets.
After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report became public, he blamed lawmakers in the Democratic Party for its release. Staff in his administration, as well as officers in the military, have also been asked to take polygraph tests. Journalists at several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at determining the sources of internal information made public.
The newspapers had reported on stories such as a botched Navy SEALs raid in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings against launching the Iran war. Last year, the Department of Defense demanded that journalists who wished to access the Pentagon sign an agreement not to publish unauthorised material. Much of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree, and a federal court struck down many of the new demands made on journalists at the department.
Trump has long raged against leakers, going back to his first term as president from 2017 to 2021. Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin told a podcast in 2024 that Trump had called for leakers to be executed, after media outlets reported that he had taken shelter in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020. Trump appeared to reprise that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms.
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