--- title: "In Bullhead City, Trump Says Leakers Should Be Shot, Then Says Reporters Leak Too" description: "At an Arizona midterm rally, the president went back to the 2025 Iran strikes and called for the oldest punishment a state has" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-15T01:34:41Z modified: 2026-10-15T03:21:39Z url: https://rews.cc/a/in-bullhead-city-trump-says-leakers-should-be-shot-then-says-45edd3 language: en tags: ["trump", "politics", "security", "leaks", "iran", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # In Bullhead City, Trump Says Leakers Should Be Shot, Then Says Reporters Leak Too *At an Arizona midterm rally, the president went back to the 2025 Iran strikes and called for the oldest punishment a state has* By Jan Sokol · October 15, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/in-bullhead-city-trump-says-leakers-should-be-shot-then-says-45edd3 ## In brief - Trump said leakers ‘should be shot’ at an Oct. 14 rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, for gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs - He called leakers ‘the scum of the earth’ and said one ‘ought to go to jail and be shot’; part of the crowd cheered - He appeared to be referring to the June 2025 Iran strikes and blamed the New York Times and CNN for reporting troop timings - He said journalists are ‘almost as bad as a leaker because they leak’ - Hegseth set up a leak-prosecution task force in August; Trump approved a firing-squad execution for Nidal Hasan last week The stage was an airport in the Arizona desert, the Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport, and the occasion was ordinary for an election season: a president asking his supporters to vote. The November 3 midterms are less than three weeks off. Donald Trump had come to Bullhead City on Wednesday, October 14, to campaign for Andy Biggs, the Republican candidate for governor. As [Al Jazeera reported](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/trump-suggests-those-who-leak-government-information-should-be-shot), somewhere in the middle of it he suggested that people who leak government information to the press should be shot. His words, as [Bloomberg recorded them](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-14/trump-says-leakers-should-be-shot-straying-from-economic-pitch), came in a sequence, each line repeating the one before: > In my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers. Then a pause of sorts, a word that sounded like a retreat: “No, leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly.” Then: “To me, they’re the scum of the earth. The leakers are the scum of the earth.” About one particular, unnamed person he said, according to [USA Today’s account, carried by Reuters](https://www.galvnews.com/news_reuters/nation/trump-says-people-in-government-who-leak-to-media-should-be-shot/article_11b16cbd-4309-5d1a-9cb4-22108e7a536d.html): “Somebody leaked, some sleazebag. They ought to go to jail and be shot.” [The Hill](https://thehill.com/homenews/6149366-trump-rally-leakers-shot/) also quoted him saying the culprit should be in jail “for the rest of their life”. Life in a cell and a bullet: in his telling the two sentences sit side by side, though one rules out the other. ![A black podium with two microphones casts a rifle-shaped shadow across a textured red background.](https://rews.cc/img/613185144d5c18a6ec73fb027cdf7a2c41922eb8.webp) A large part of the crowd cheered, [Mediaite reported](https://www.mediaite.com/media/leakers-should-be-shot-trump-dreams-of-grim-fate-for-scum-sources-who-run-to-the-new-york-times-and-cnn/). ## The raid he had in mind He named no operation, but his meaning appeared to be Operation Midnight Hammer, the American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025, during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. In his account the departure and arrival times of American forces were leaked and published by *The New York Times* and CNN, Iran’s forces were “waiting for” the Americans, and he called the raid off and moved it two days later. He offered his own justification for the attack: “When they leak what time you’re going to attack a country, and the reason you’re attacking is really for defense,” he said, “because you don’t want them to have a weapon that can blow up millions of people at one shot.” This is an old grievance with the same two outlets. In 2025 he threatened to sue the *Times* and CNN over their reporting on a preliminary intelligence assessment, which disputed his claim that Iran’s enrichment sites had been “completely and totally obliterated.” So the leak that angers him most is one that, by his own account, delayed a raid by two days. The reporting that followed the raid, the kind that questioned what it achieved, angered him too. ![A white origami stealth aircraft flies above a monochrome desert, while a red magnifying glass highlights a facility with domed buildings.](https://rews.cc/img/6f6426e2bbb408ed4a5f89709969254a5899beb6.webp) ## From the source to the reporter He did not stop at the official who talks. Having described what should happen to the leaker, he moved on to the people who receive the leak. Journalists, he said, are “almost as bad as a leaker because they leak.” And: “They leak false information — that makes them a leaker — oftentimes without a source.” One report [carried on Yahoo](https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-says-leakers-shot-then-212706112.html) noted that this put reporters in the same category as the people he had just said deserved execution. Earlier in the rally he had attacked reporters for criticising his acceptance of a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar for use as Air Force One. Watch where the logic goes, and this is reflection rather than reporting. First the secret is a crime. Then the person who tells it is scum. Then the person who prints it is almost as bad. Then whoever prints something false, and false is whatever the ruler says it is, has become a leaker too, even without a source. Each step carries the threat a little further from the classified file and a little closer to the front page. ![A large black binder clip grips a stack of cream papers beside an envelope, with red cord stretched across them against a textured black, white, and red background.](https://rews.cc/img/ca5a6b5fb280c6a5b29af10b23d4fd61a326ca4f.webp) ## A season of punishments The words did not come out of nowhere. In August, Pete Hegseth, who runs what the administration now calls the Department of War, announced a joint task force with the Justice Department to identify and prosecute people who pass sensitive information to the press. “Leaked information risks lives,” he said. Last week Trump approved a firing-squad execution for Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major who carried out the 2009 Fort Hood attack. Hegseth [said it would be livestreamed](https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-announced-a-public-execution-on-a-podcast-and-the-ar-1bdf02), and Trump later said no final decision had been made on making it public. The [order naming a firing squad](https://rews.cc/a/seventeen-years-after-fort-hood-the-army-is-told-to-ready-a--da3d51) went to an Army that is still working out how to carry it out. At the same time the Justice Department is [arguing in court](https://rews.cc/a/justice-department-argues-trump-can-ban-cnn-ms-now-and-polit-7a36a0) that the president may keep CNN, MS NOW and Politico out of the White House. None of this makes a rally line into policy. No order has been issued against leakers beyond the prosecutions Hegseth promised in August. But a government that is planning a public execution and telling the courts which reporters it may shut out is not a government in which talk of shooting leakers can be taken as a joke. ## Back to the vote Bullhead City was one stop in a series. Over recent weeks Trump has campaigned in Alabama, Texas, Nebraska and Ohio, among other places. Bloomberg described the remarks about leakers as a departure from his economic pitch. The pitch was the reason for the trip: Biggs, the governorship, the turnout on November 3. In the middle of it he produced that one word, “No,” and replaced the bullet with being “dealt with very, very strongly.” It sounded like a correction. Then he went on to the scum of the earth, the sleazebag, jail and shooting, and the newspapers.