Trump Says Whistleblowers Should Be Shot, Attacks Media at Rally

The president then referred to journalists covering his rally, saying they are "almost as bad as a bad whistleblower."

US President Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that people who leak sensitive government information to the media "should be shot", calling them "the pride of the earth".

"In my opinion, whistleblowers should be shot," Trump said Wednesday at a rally in Bullhead, Arizona. "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's comments came as he described a planned attack on Iran that he said would have to be delayed after someone "leaked the time we're leaving, the time we're coming in." He appears to be referring to Operation Midnight Hammer in June last year, when the US launched a surprise attack on three of Iran's most critical nuclear sites as Tehran was embroiled in a 12-day war with Israel.

In the wake of the June attack, a leaked preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency report found that Iran's nuclear sites had not been damaged as the Trump administration had initially claimed, and that Iran could still enrich uranium. Reports also say Iran may have moved enriched material from the facility before the attack.

"Somebody leaked — a piece of nonsense," the president said. "They should go to jail and be shot. They should be in jail for the rest of their lives. But they disclosed that we were leaving Missouri at 12:07 and it was in the New York Times, CNN."

Moments later, Trump referred to reporters covering his rally as "almost as bad as whistleblowers." "They're leaking falsely," the president said. "That makes them a whistleblower, right?"

Trump's long-held view that whistleblowers are bad — most of the time

As a civilian flirting with a top US job, he has often criticized former NSA contractor Edward Snowden on social media and in public statements. Snowden's 2013 leaks revealed the NSA's programs, sparking a global debate about government surveillance. In response to the revelations, Trump said he was a "spy" who "should be executed."

As president, when The New York Times reported in 2017 that his campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Trump lamented on Twitter at the time how "illegal classified information leaks have been a huge problem in Washington for years" and raged that such whistleblowers "will be caught."

When a whistleblower came forward in 2019 with a complaint that Trump was using the power of his office to seek interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election, Trump told staff at the US mission to the United Nations that he wanted to know who provided the whistleblower. "It's close to being a spy," he said. “You know what we used to do with spies and treason back in the old days, right? We used to treat them a little differently than we do now."

But Trump has welcomed revelations that benefit him politically. Days before the 2016 presidential election, Yakov celebrated at a rally in Wilmington, Ohio, how WikiLeaks released private emails from John Podesta, the campaign chairman of her Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, as well as emails from the Democratic National Committee. Boy, I love reading that WikiLeaks! Trump said. He also weighed in on Russia's hacking of Clinton's email and asked them to release what they might have found. Trump even said he would have favored Snowden if he had released former President Barack Obama's birth records at a time when conspiracy theories, largely fueled by Trump, were trailing the former Democratic president.

The Trump administration is trying to deal with the revelations

The second Trump administration has since moved to limit disclosures to the press. When reports surfaced that the United States was depleting its ammunition stockpile in the midst of a war with Iran, the Pentagon subjected dozens of civilian employees and military officers to polygraph tests to identify the source of the leak. Trump had called for long prison sentences for whistleblowers.

Journalists from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post received subpoenas after reporting on national security issues. But the news organizations opposed this summons and the Ministry of Justice withdrew them. In January, the FBI raided the home of a Post reporter as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of mishandling sensitive national security information.

The Justice Department has also charged alleged whistleblowers: In April, the department announced it had arrested a former military employee on charges of passing classified national defense information to unauthorized recipients, including a journalist.

The Defense Department also threatened to cut off Pentagon access to reporters unless they signed a non-disclosure agreement. Much of the Pentagon's press force has been cut, and a federal judge sided with the press in March, striking down several parts of the department's press access policy.

Also, this is not the first time that Trump has acted on the fly by firing at some people.

Three years ago, at a California luncheon with Republicans, Trump said he was in favor of shooting shoplifters and showing himself to be tough on crime ahead of the 2024 election. "They actually go and take everything out of the store, and then you see these guys five miles away selling stuff or out of the back of cars. It's a horrible thing. When the police are allowed to do their job — and that means, in some cases, shooting them — it stops immediately."

The president has also previously shot at migrants to prevent them from entering the country. According to the book Border Wars: Inside Trump's Attack on Immigration, by New York Times reporters Michael D. Sheer and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, in March 2019 Trump outlined extreme methods to keep them out, privately suggesting to aides that troops shoot immigrants crossing the border. But he was told that was not allowed. Trump addressed the accusations on social media, saying, "I might be tough on border security, but not that tough."

He has also suggested doing the same to protesters: During the George Floyd protests in the spring of 2020, Trump was outraged, and according to his first-term defense secretary, Mark Esper, the president also considered ordering the military to shoot racial justice protesters in the legs.

Last week, the president approved the U.S. military's first execution by firing squad since World War II, and even showed enthusiasm for a live broadcast. However, Trump has since changed his tune amid a barrage of negative feedback.

"There are two thoughts: don't show it and show it," Trump told reporters on Saturday. "Because, you know, by showing that, maybe others won't do what he did. So I'll ultimately make the decision. I know what the military would like to do, but we'll make the decision."