Trump says leakers 'should be shot,' then turns on reporters at Arizona rally

President Trump told a campaign rally crowd in Bullhead City, Arizona, on Wednesday that government officials who leak information to journalists "should be shot," then turned to reporters covering the event and suggested they belonged in the same category. The remarks, confirmed by multiple outlets that covered the rally, came as Trump recounted a disputed version of events surrounding last year's American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which he said had been delayed after departure and arrival times for the mission leaked to the press.

"In my opinion, leakers should be shot," Trump told the crowd, according to NBC News's account of the rally. He added that leakers "should be dealt with very, very strongly," and described them elsewhere in the speech as "scum of the earth." Minutes later, pointing toward journalists assembled at the event, he said: "Those same people up there, they're almost as bad as a leaker, because they leak."

A disputed timeline

Trump's account centered on Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 strike on three Iranian nuclear sites. He told the crowd that someone had disclosed a B-2 bomber's scheduled 12:07 a.m. departure from a Missouri base to The New York Times and CNN, and that he called Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to change the timing. "Let's change the time," he said he told Caine, adding that the operation was pushed back before ultimately proceeding. News organizations that have covered the episode, including Al Jazeera's reporting on the remarks, note that Trump did not identify who leaked the information and offered no documentation that any operational detail actually changed as a result. Other accounts of the same remarks describe the strike as having gone forward on its original schedule, a discrepancy that has not been resolved on the public record.

The figures behind the broader leak hunt are more concrete. Roughly 50 members of the Joint Staff were given polygraph examinations in August as investigators tried to trace earlier disclosures about depleted munitions stockpiles during the Iran conflict, according to reporting on the Pentagon's internal investigation; Caine himself was not among those tested. Separately, a Maryland grand jury indicted a Navy veteran and defense contractor, Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, in January on six counts tied to the unlawful transmission and retention of national defense information, after prosecutors said he removed classified material from a secure facility and passed it to a reporter, according to a Justice Department announcement of the indictment.

A year of escalating leak hunts

Wednesday's remarks did not emerge from nowhere. Since the Iran strikes, the administration has pursued leak sources through several parallel tracks. In January, the FBI searched the Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seized her phone, laptops and a smartwatch as part of the investigation that produced the Perez-Lugones indictment; the government later told the Post that Natanson herself was not a target, though FBI Director Kash Patel publicly linked the search to someone who had "obtained and reported" classified military information, according to NBC News's account of the search. A federal magistrate judge subsequently ruled that investigators could not examine the seized data, a decision a district judge upheld on appeal.

In June, the Justice Department issued grand jury subpoenas to four journalists — three from the Post and one from The Wall Street Journal — seeking testimony about their sources; the subpoenas were later withdrawn after the news organizations pushed back. The following month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a joint Pentagon-Justice Department task force dedicated to identifying and prosecuting leakers, giving the department's Office of General Counsel broad authority to demand records across the Pentagon on an expedited basis.

The administration's approach to the press has also played out in federal court. The New York Times and national security reporter Julian E. Barnes sued the Pentagon over a credentialing policy they argued let officials revoke reporters' building access for routine journalism. A Senior U.S. District Judge ruled for the Times, finding the policy viewpoint-discriminatory and ordering credentials reinstated, and later found the Pentagon had tried to evade that order through a revised policy and directed compliance again. The litigation, docketed in federal court as New York Times Co. v. Department of Defense, remains open, with the Pentagon having said it intends to appeal.

Journalists and Pentagon staff in the crosshairs

The people most directly affected fall into two overlapping groups. Military and civilian personnel with access to classified operational details — the Joint Staff officers polygraphed over the munitions leaks, the contractor now facing trial in Maryland, and anyone the task force Hegseth created identifies going forward — face the prospect of criminal referral, loss of clearance or prosecution. Journalists who cover national security, meanwhile, have absorbed a string of direct actions: a reporter's home searched, sources subpoenaed before grand juries, and credentials threatened at the building where most Pentagon coverage originates.

Wednesday's rally added a third, less tangible effect. By grouping reporters with leakers in the same breath he used to call for leakers to be shot, Trump extended rhetoric previously aimed at anonymous government sources to journalists themselves, something press advocates have flagged as a pattern over the past year even when, as in this case, no specific reporter was named or threatened with a concrete action.

Measured reaction, so far

Formal responses to Wednesday's specific remarks were limited in the hours afterward. Press-freedom groups have objected repeatedly to related actions over the past year; the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, reacting earlier this month to a separate Justice Department inquiry touching television networks, called that move "another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists" — language that captures how such groups have characterized the administration's broader posture toward leak investigations and media oversight.

"In my opinion, leakers should be shot. ... To me, they are the scum of the earth."

In Congress, reaction to the administration's leak crackdown has so far tracked along familiar partisan lines, even if lawmakers have not yet weighed in on Wednesday's remarks specifically. After an earlier court ruling on Pentagon press credentials, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, ranking member of a House Armed Services oversight subcommittee, issued a statement calling the credentialing fight "an attack on the First Amendment and our democracy" and said Hegseth was obligated to comply with the court's order. Republican officials, for their part, have consistently defended the leak investigations as necessary to protect classified military operations, and the White House did not immediately respond to the rally remarks with any walk-back or clarification.

What comes next

None of the legal or investigative threads opened over the past year has closed. Perez-Lugones's criminal case is proceeding in federal court in Maryland, where he faces trial on the transmission and retention charges. The Pentagon's press-credentialing litigation remains active, with an appeal still pending and the underlying policy fight over newsroom access to the building unresolved. The joint Pentagon-Justice Department leak task force that Hegseth established in July continues to operate, and officials have not said whether the polygraph program that swept up roughly 50 Joint Staff members will be expanded or wound down.

Trump is scheduled to continue a run of midterm campaign stops in the coming weeks as Republicans try to protect narrow majorities in the November 3 elections, and leak-related talking points — tied to the Iran strikes, to Pentagon funding fights, or to unflattering reporting about the administration — are likely to keep surfacing at similar events. Whether Wednesday's remarks translate into any new policy, prosecution or disciplinary action, as opposed to rhetoric consistent with a year of escalating pressure on both sources and reporters, is likely to become clearer only as the pending court case and the Maryland prosecution move forward.