Trump: Those who leak government information should be executed by firing squad
The U.S. president has long been dissatisfied with insider information about his administration being leaked to the media.
US President Donald Trump has proposed the death penalty for people who leak information to the news media.
Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead, Arizona, as he rallied supporters to vote in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
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"In my opinion, whistleblowers should be shot," Trump told the audience. "In the old days, we used to shoot whistleblowers, you know, what time are you going to attack a country when they leak," he says.
Trump made the statement in an apparent reference to Operation Midnight Hammer, in which the United States launched a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025 as part of its 12-day war with Israel.
After the attack, several media outlets published the findings of the initial report of the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
That report — which has not yet been released to the public — suggested that Iran could move some of its enriched uranium away from sites the United States had bombed.
It also shows that the amount of damage to Iran's nuclear facilities is less than what Trump claimed.
However, Trump appeared to indicate that the timing of the US strikes was among the leaks. He blamed the news for calling out the media for putting members of the military at risk, particularly The New York Times and CNN.
"When we were leaving, they leaked when we were arriving," Trump said, claiming he had to reschedule the bombing campaign two days later.
"Someone leaked. Some bag of shit, they need to go to jail or be shot. They need to be in jail for the rest of their lives."
Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media and has previously called for stiff penalties against any official who leaks classified information to news outlets.
After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report were made public, he blamed Democratic lawmakers for its release.
At the time, Trump wrote on social media: "Democrats are the ones who leaked the full flight information to the nuclear sites in Iran." "They must be tried!"
Under Trump, the White House has also taken aggressive steps to track down the source of the leak.
His government staff as well as army officers have been asked to take polygraph tests to trace the source of the leak.
Journalists from several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at identifying the sources of the leaked inside information.
Newspapers reported on stories like the failed Navy SEAL strike in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings.
Last year, the Department of Defense required journalists seeking access to the Pentagon to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Much of the Pentagon press refused to comply, and a federal court rejected many of the department's new demands from journalists.
Trump has long railed against whistleblowers, dating back to his first term in office from 2017 to 2021.
Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said in a podcast in 2024 that Trump called for the execution of whistleblowers after the media reported that he had taken refuge in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020.
Trump appeared to echo that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
"Whistleblowers should be dealt with very severely," Trump said. "To me, they're the scum of the earth."