Donald Trump’s first term was full of leaks, and his second hasn’t been spared.
At a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, on Wednesday, he told a cheering crowd what he thinks should happen to the people behind them. In his view, they “should be shot.”
Trump seemed to be thinking of last year’s strikes on Iran, known as Operation Midnight Hammer. He said someone had “leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” and the Washington Post described his remarks as an apparent reference to the strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The president went on to say, “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers.”
His language got harsher as he went. He called leakers “the scum of the earth,” according to Bloomberg, which noted the remarks came as he railed against coverage of the Iran war and strayed from his economic pitch. Then he turned toward the reporters covering the rally and said they were “almost as bad as a leaker.”
Trump: “Leakers should be — in my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot.” https://t.co/lqNK175RNF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 14, 2026
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The administration has spent months pursuing leaks through less theatrical means. In May, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a government-wide nondisclosure form for federal employees, citing leaks about immigration enforcement and the January raid on Venezuela. OPM says the proposal “does not create new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights.”
Federal workers’ advocates were not persuaded. National Treasury Employees Union president Doreen Greenwald said there was “no basis” for the move, and her union has said it would oppose it.
The pursuit has reached the press as well.
In January, the FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor charged with illegally retaining national defense materials. Natanson has not been accused of wrongdoing, according to Reuters.
A federal magistrate judge, William Porter, barred prosecutors from searching her devices, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press says he concluded that letting the Justice Department do so would be “leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.” In May, a second judge, Anthony Trenga, sided with Natanson and the Post and overruled the government’s objections.
The administration’s best-known leak came from inside.
In March 2025, a Signal chat of senior officials accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and carried details of a strike on Yemen. An inspector general’s report later faulted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for using Signal.
Featured image via X screengrab
