The White House is sending conflicting messages about whether leakers are sharing classified information or the information itself is “fake news.”
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The ordeal involves a recent report that President Donald Trump had a dramatic meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In an effort to to “knock down” the report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to accidentally verify elements of the reporting, a Washington Post journalist said.
Trump and Hegseth sparred over reports the U.S. Army has depleted its munitions stockpile. Reuters reported Tuesday that this includes “the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM).” Sources said “the U.S. has used ‘virtually all’ of these weapons.”
Trump fumed at Hegseth during a Camp David Cabinet meeting last week, saying he thought the issue had been “fixed,” the Post reported.
A phone call from Trump over the munitions issue prompted a “crisis meeting” at the Pentagon over the matter, NBC News reported on Thursday. Hegseth, during his Camp David exchange with Trump, blamed the munitions issue on Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. That resulted in an angry phone call from Trump to Feinberg, where the president suggested Feinberg should be fired, two sources told NBC Mews.
After midnight on Thursday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social, denying the munitions shortage, instead claiming, “The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history.”
“The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” Trump added.
Meanwhile, Leavitt continues to call reports of a Camp David altercation “B.S.” and swore the altercation “literally never happened.”
Will Chamberlain, a Trump ally, posted on X that if Todd Blanche is confirmed as attorney general he should “order a full investigation of these leaks, with subpoenas going to the reporters involved I’m quite tired of hearing about sensitive, classified conversations about our military readiness.”
He was flooded with replies, including Leavitt’s tweet saying that the reports are fake. Now it’s causing more confusion.
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Leavitt and Trump might claim that the story is fake, but they’re also claiming “leakers” revealed that “fake” information.
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein was confused: “The stories are made-up fiction. But also they’re leaks and were gonna jail the people who leaked it.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger joked, “We have so many munitions that we’re hunting people down that say otherwise.”
Political scientist Ian Bremmer similarly understood the complicated situation the White House was putting itself in. “If the Washington Post claims are false, how could the ‘leakers’ have revealed classified information? It’s a mystery,” he wrote on X.
“Here’s why the accuracy question is almost secondary tonight: Iran’s leadership reads the Washington Post too. Whether the Camp David clash happened exactly as described or not, if Tehran’s decision-makers consider it true, it shapes their read on U.S. missile stockpiles, appetite for further strikes, and cohesion inside this administration — all in the middle of an active unresolved conflict,” wrote investigative journalist Gerald Posner on X.
“A contested two-source story can move a wartime calculus in Tehran just as fast as an ironclad one. That asymmetry is the real story here, separate from whether every detail holds up,” he added.
Meanwhile, MS NOW host Joe Scarborough called for Hegseth to be step down. “When Hegseth attacks media questions on this extreme munitions shortage as ‘fake news,’ he makes this unforgivable blunder worse. Congress needs to take action. Americans need the truth. Hegseth can’t give it. He needs to go,” he wrote on X.
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