'Especially weird' twist uncovered in White House's leak denial: report
President Donald Trump has been raging against possible leakers over information he gave away months ago.
Trump has spent the week vowing to hunt down "treasonous" leakers over a missile shortage he was warned about and that he publicly acknowledged months before he launched his war with Iran, points out a Saturday piece by the legal blog emptywheel.
"Donald Trump told us on February 23, before he started this war, that he was reading the stories describing that he was warned, including about the missile shortage," emptywheel wrote. "And his response was to say that the decision was his, that if we went in spite of the warnings, the decision was his."
The depletion of long-range missiles and interceptors was never a surprise, but despite that, Trump's recriminations have been building as he even turns on people within his own administration.
Emptywheel noted a recent report by The Washington Post that revealed Trump laid into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Camp David meeting because of the shortages, but White House and Pentagon spokespeople have denied the report.
Trump took to Truth Social to deny the missile shortage as well, writing, "The U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,'" but also went after "the 'leakers' of those treasonous statements" about a shortage. He said they were "being hunted down."
According to emptywheel, "the especially weird part" of the White House and Pentagon denials is that they insist Trump isn't angry at Hegseth at all. "Shouldn't the President be angry with a Secretary of Defense who conducted the war in such a dumba— way, losing the war while blowing the missile reserves?" the blog asked.
The blog also mentioned reporting that suggests that missile supplies are indeed dangerously low. A CNN report estimated about 80 percent of U.S. THAAD interceptors are gone, and Reuters reported, citing sources, that "virtually all" of the Army's surface-to-surface weapons have been used up.