The US president has long been unhappy with inside information about his administration being leaked to the media.
United States President Donald Trump has suggested that those who leak information to the news media should be shot as punishment.
Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, as he urged supporters to vote in the November 3 midterm elections.
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“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told the crowd. “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.”
Trump made the statement in an apparent reference to Operation Midnight Hammer, which saw the US launch a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025 during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
In the aftermath of the attack, several media outlets published findings from a preliminary report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
That report – which had not yet been released to the public – indicated that Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium away from the sites the US had bombed.
It also suggested that the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more modest than what Trump had asserted.
Trump, however, appeared to signal that the timing of the US attacks was among the leaked information. He accused the news media of putting military members in danger, calling out The New York Times and CNN in particular.
“They leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” Trump said, claiming he had to reschedule the bombing campaign two days later as a result.
“Somebody leaked. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.”
Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media, and he has previously called for harsh punishment against any official who passes on confidential information to news outlets.
After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report became public, he blamed lawmakers in the Democratic Party for its release.
“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “They should be prosecuted!”
Under Trump, the White House has taken aggressive action to track down the source of leaks.
Staff in his administration, as well as officers in the military, have also been asked to take polygraph tests.
Journalists at several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at determining the sources of internal information made public.
The newspapers had reported on stories such as a botched Navy SEALs raid in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings against launching the Iran war.
Last year, the Department of Defense demanded that journalists who wished to access the Pentagon sign an agreement not to publish unauthorised material.
Much of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree, and a federal court struck down many of the new demands made on journalists at the department.
Trump has long raged against leakers, going back to his first term as president from 2017 to 2021.
Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin told a podcast in 2024 that Trump had called for leakers to be executed, after media outlets reported that he had taken shelter in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020.
Trump appeared to reprise that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms.
“Leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly,” Trump said. “To me, they are the scum of the earth.”
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Sunday morning, Oct. 9, 2022, around 8 a.m., I was about to take a shower when I decided to check my cellphone one more time. Thank God I did: If I hadn’t, I would’ve been half an hour late on assisting in one of the most explosive stories ever to hit L.A. politics.
Via Slack, Times assistant managing editor Steve Clow asked if I could serve as a second set of ears on audio that my colleagues had unearthed involving four of the most powerful L.A. políticos at the time: City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, and L.A. County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera. I was still in my birthday suit (sorry for the visual, gentle readers, but I’m sworn to report the facts on this job) when I played the snippet Clow shared: Martinez describing the Black son of then-Councilmember Mike Bonin as “su negrito” — his darky.
I put on my shorts and told my wife I wouldn’t be helping at her restaurant that day.
Clow sent me more clips over the next hour, each crasser than the other — I remember gasping audibly at the part when the four were laughing as Martinez referred to Oaxacans as “ugly.” That morning, my colleagues Benjamin Oreskes, Dakota Smith, Julia Wick and David Zahniser published their first story on the fiasco, which turned out to be a secretly recorded conversation from a year earlier that someone had posted on Reddit just the day before.
The scandal quickly became a national sensation, with even then-President Joe Biden weighing in. L.A. wretched in collective disgust and demanded action, which definitely came: Martinez and Herrera quickly resigned, while Cedillo — who had already lost his reelection bid — would stay on until his bitter end, and De León wouldn’t leave until challenger Ysabel Jurado destroyed him in his 2024 reelection bid. The electoral repercussions of the audio leak can still be felt four years later in this election, as Nithya Raman stages a strong challenge against incumbent Karen Bass — a sentence no one would’ve believed in the fall of 2022, when Bass was on the cusp of winning her first term, and Raman was the lone democratic socialist on the council.
I would’ve figured the anniversary of something as titanic as all of the above would’ve sparked more commemorations than just my columna this week. Nope! L.A. has moved on to the point that Cedillo wasn’t booted from a group photo that included current District 9 council candidate Jose Ugarte, former Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and current Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez — because even Chicanosauruses can survive a political asteroid, I guess?
Having political leaders spew racist, homophobic nonsense now seems like the good ol’ days in an era where infernos destroy or stink up swaths of L.A., immigration agents terrorize immigrants from Westwood to the Eastside, and a spokesperson for a sitting American president denies that the commander in chief suggested Iran bomb the City of Angels, even though he said it during a campaign rally.
I shouldn’t really be surprised, I guess: L.A. infamously loves to forget its own history. But I would urge all you readers to read the great, Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage my colleagues did in the aftermath of the audio leak scandal, because it captured the city at its worst — but also its finest as residents fought back and demanded politicians do better.
Four years later, we can only hope this upcoming election shows more of the same.
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A source has claimed that even though the line-up of The Celebrity Traitors signed NDAs while filming the show, the finalists have become ‘a hot topic’ at showbiz events
22:50, 10 Oct 2026Updated 23:00, 10 Oct 2026
Claudia Winkleman hosts the popular BBC show(Image: BBC )
The Celebrity Traitors has been thrown into chaos with the finalists being “leaked”. The leaks have reportedly become “a hot topic at showbiz parties”, as bosses scramble to protect the identities.
On Friday, October 9, the BBC released record-breaking audience figures for the popular show, revealing that the third episode achieved a peak audience of 10.3 million viewers. Then, on Friday night, an estimated 9.6 million fans watched the fourth episode of the show, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, 54 – but this could all be in jeopardy if the names get out.
While the all-star line-up signed non-disclosure agreements pledging to keep the game’s results secret until the episodes air, a source claimed that news of the final has leaked. Because of this, executives at the BBC are said to be on edge as the finalists are discussed at various celebrity events, with bosses hoping the names don’t become public knowledge.
To see more of the stories you love from The Mirror and to find them easily in Google, make us your preferred source. Free and easy to do, just click on the link here to find more from The Mirror at the top of your feed.
“Because of the leak, who makes the final is now a hot topic at showbiz parties,” the insider told The Sun. “It’s also spread how certain players get on, not helped by the fact that another source has been suggesting who’s been placed for interviews around the final.
“It’s vital the leaks don’t make it to gossip forums online and on social media, where fans can find the information. The BBC is hoping that anyone happening upon the info or hearing it from friends will help keep the secrets of the castle and stay quiet.”
The source added: “The problem is a small group will be aware of The Celebrity Traitors’ secrets, including those who work on the show, the celebrities who ran the course and possibly their close family and friends.”
The BBC show is so popular that even Prince William and Kate Middleton are said to be obsessed with it. Speaking on Palace Confidential on YouTube, Daily Mail royal editor Rebecca English revealed that the Prince and Princess of Wales are huge fans of The Celebrity Traitors, which has an IMDb rating of 8.7.
“Now, William and Catherine are massive Traitors fans. I can tell you that now. They love the programme. Absolutely glued to it,” Rebecca said.
The 2026 celebrity spin-off of the psychological reality game show takes place at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands, where a star-studded cast plays for a £100,000 charity prize pot. The show is currently in the middle of its broadcast run, following the massive success of Series 1 in late 2025, which was won by Traitor Alan Carr.
Currently, there are three Traitors – comedian James Acaster, 41, TV presenter Maya Jama, 32, and mathematician Hannah Fry, 42 – on the show. Actor Richard E. Grant, 69, was banished by the Faithful during the first roundtable.
Episodes air weekly on BBC One and are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
If I ever need to humble myself — if my head inflates with grand visions of becoming the next Steve Lopez or Bill Plaschke — I pull up the transcript of the secret recording that upended Los Angeles politics after The Times broke the story exactly four years ago.
It’s like a modern-day version of “Ozymandias,” except far more vulgar, nowhere near as poetic and a better warning against hubris than anything Shelley could have penned.
“The thing for us is to exercise our power,” said then-City Councilmember Gil Cedillo, about halfway through an hourlong conversation he was having with three of the city’s most powerful political figures.
Oh, did they ever — and nowhere near the way they intended.
Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, the president of the City Council and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, respectively, quickly resigned for their roles in the racist, homophobic drivel on the recording. Cedillo — who was finishing out his term — and Councilmember Kevin de León refused to step down, besmirching their well-earned reputations as progressive lions.
The L.A. they sought to create — where Latinos ascend at the expense of the Black community, and anyone who gets in the way is crushed — never came to be. And the recording that exposed their machinations ultimately destroyed the type of ethnic politicking that made the careers of too many self-serving power grabbers, including this quartet.
The transcript of their back-and-forth now reads as prophecy — and we’re far better for it.
Much of the discussion, which happened in October 2021 at the headquarters of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, was devoted to whining that L.A.’s Latino-majority council districts, and some cities elsewhere in the county, were represented by Black leaders instead of Latinos, even as Latino residents far outnumbered Black ones.
“F—, the way I see it, all of the seats are Latino,” said Herrera, who hailed the rise of a “little Latino caucus of our … own” that he felt should reign permanently.
He and the others predicted a future in which vengeful Black politicians would try to sabotage future Latino leaders on their way out of office, creating “poor Latino districts with nothing,” as Martinez put it.
She was referring to redistricting proposals that would chop off assets like the Coliseum and Exposition Park from South L.A.’s District 9 — the most Latino district in the city, represented by a Black council member, Curren Price.
“So they f— a future Latino for CD 9,” De León whined. “That’s how arrogant, just how arrogant it is.”
That’s not what ended up happening.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León at a council meeting in December 2022 after a two-month absence following his role in that year’s audio leak scandal.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
District 9 didn’t lose any assets. Black leaders saw the writing on the wall and didn’t run a serious Black candidate to replace the termed-out Price this year. That created space for two Latinos — Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte — to make it to the general election. No matter which candidate wins in November, the City Council will have fewer than three Black members for the first time in 63 years.
Both Mazariegos and Ugarte say that the anti-Black scheming of the audio leak villains inspired them to run campaigns focusing on Black and Latino residents as one constituency, reflecting how life is actually lived in South L.A., not how Latinos from elsewhere in the city imagine it to be.
Mazariegos attended the first City Council meeting after The Times dropped the audio leak bombshell in October 2022. He remembers Cedillo peeking at the angry audience and temporarily returning to the council’s back room.
“No community should have to lose power for another to gain it,” said Mazariegos, who would become the first Central American immigrant to serve on the council if he were to win. “Our power grows when we build it together.”
Ugarte, formerly one of Price’s top aides, agreed. He argued that the best way to lead in South L.A. as a Latino council member is “with respect for those who came before us, the humility to listen to those doing the work today, and the understanding that District 9 is strongest when [Black and Latino residents] move forward together.”
Born in Oaxaca, Ugarte would become L.A.’s first Indigenous council member if he wins. That would be a rich coda to the audio leak, considering that Oaxacans received some of the nastiest insults. Martinez described them as “ little short dark people” who were feos — ugly. Cedillo joked that they were “little ones,” while Herrera cracked that they were “indios.”
Who’s laughing now?
The Feos Four also spent time kvetching about Nithya Raman, who was finishing her first year on the council. In 2020, she had upset an incumbent to become the first democratic socialist council member.
At the time of the recording, rivals were trying to diminish Raman’s power by drawing boundaries that would put her district “in the blender and chop [it] up, left and right,” as De León described it.
“She’s not our ally,” Cedillo said. “She’s not going to help us. Her district is not a district we can count on.”
Give credit to Cedillo and his pendejo pals: They were already seeing Raman and other democratic socialists as an emerging force, even while downplaying the DSA’s chances. De León said that Raman’s politics were “about just her as an individual.” Herrera dismissed Hugo Soto-Martínez, then a no-name union organizer aiming to unseat Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, as a “kid.” Nury Martinez blithely mispronounced Eunisses Hernandez’s name while cackling about the first-time candidate’s challenge to Cedillo.
If Cedillo and De León weren’t so convinced of their own political immortality, they could have helped check the DSA’s rise that has so vexed L.A.’s liberal leaders. Instead, Hernandez beat Cedillo in a shocking upset in 2022, while Soto-Martínez won in the fall. And fellow democratic socialist Ysabel Jurado took out De León in 2024. Those triumphs paved the path for DSA-LA-backed candidate Marissa Roy to make a strong run for city attorney this year. Mazariegos is also endorsed by DSA-LA, which is backing Raman for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass.
Then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo at the Los Angeles City Council meeting on Oct. 11, 2022, two days after the release of explosive audio involving him led to protesters demanding his resignation.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The group should send Cedillo and De León bouquets of red roses as gracias for assisting their ascendancy. All of us owe the foursome a thanks for hastening the demise of the old Latino political machines that birthed them and kept the city stuck in tribalism for too long.
Now, Latino politicians must run on their bona fides for all Angelenos, instead of just their latinidad. Soto-Martínez and Hernandez won reelection outright in the June primary because their constituents appreciated their sewer socialism approach, focusing on quality of life issues instead of ideological revolution. Meanwhile, Chicanosauruses are wheezing with diminished power as they urge Latinos to back Bass. The message doesn’t seem to be landing: A recent Berkeley IGS/Times poll found that 45% of Latino voters favored Raman to Bass’ 21%, with 34% undecided.
Gone are the days when Latino voters blindly believed Latino leaders. Why bother, after Martinez and her crew proved the folly of ethnic politics?
Near the start of the recording, Martinez complained that voters and the media always seemed to forgive Black politicians caught up in scandal, while Latinos didn’t get the same treatment.
“They’re never done,” she complained. “They never close a chapter on us.”
L.A. did close the chapter. Now, the Feos Four’s only legacy is “that colossal wreck” of their conversation, to quote the finale of “Ozymandias,” left to rot forever.
