President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States has “massive amounts” of munitions as White House and Pentagon officials denied a Washington Post report alleging a clash over shortages.
President Trump vowed to hunt down and jail “leakers” after The Washington Post reported he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over U.S. munitions shortages — an account the White House and Pentagon call fake.
Trump made the threat Thursday in a post on Truth Social, writing that leakers of what he called “treasonous statements” were “being hunted down” and that “long term jail sentences will be sought.”
In the same post, the president said that the United States had “massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” and that defense contractors have erected more plants and factories than ever before in the nation’s history.
This comes after The Washington Post reported on the argument between Trump and Hegseth that took place at Camp David the previous week regarding the misleading assurances about the U.S. arms stockpile situation.
Two people familiar with the exchange told the Washington Post that Trump demanded to know why he had apparently been misled about severe munitions shortages now limiting military options against Iran. The Post said the gaps involved long-range precision weapons and air-defense interceptors.
Trump believed that the issue had already been resolved during the earlier stages of the conflict and asked Hegseth questions about it after learning about their lack of sufficient numbers. The Washington Post states that the shortages were one of the main reasons for the reluctance of Trump to launch more strikes on Iran.
White House and Pentagon deny the report
The White House denied the report flatly. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, writing on X, said she was at Camp David with Trump and Hegseth and that the exchange “literally never happened.”
Leavitt said the story had been “shopped to many outlets” by someone trying to disparage the defense secretary, and she called it “FAKE NEWS.” She added that Trump “loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job.”
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department had given the Post the same denial. He described the report as anonymously sourced and called it “Complete & total Fake News.”
The dispute leaves a sharp gap between the administration’s account and the one attributed to the Post’s sources.
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