Bullhead City, Arizona - President Donald Trump said people who leak information about US military operations to the press "should be shot," speaking at a campaign rally in Arizona on Wednesday.
Trump was angered by an unidentified source who allegedly leaked the timing of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities to journalists.
"Leakers should be shot," Trump said, adding that leakers had been shot "in the old days."
US forces bombed nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan in June 2025 as part of Operation Midnight Hammer.
Trump has repeatedly justified those strikes, as well as his ongoing war against Iran, by arguing that the Islamic Republic must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.
The remarks come amid renewed debate over the death penalty in the US, with the Pentagon planning its first military execution in 65 years.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also wants the execution to be livestreamed, a proposal that has sparked widespread criticism.
Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of carrying out a massacre at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on December 3 at the site of the attack.
The debate has also been fueled by a failed execution in Tennessee, where authorities said Christa Pike (50) survived two doses of pentobarbital. She was set to become the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.