WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- President Donald Trump told a crowd in Arizona on Wednesday that government workers who leak to the press "should be shot," then pointed at the reporters covering his rally and said they were "almost as bad."

"Leakers should be, in my opinion, leakers should be shot," Trump said at a campaign event for Rep. Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee for governor, in Bullhead City, less than three weeks before Election Day. He tied the remark to a planned raid on Iran that he said he had to call off after someone "leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving."

In the remarks NBC quoted, he did not say who the leaker was or whether anyone had been identified. "Somebody leaked, some sleazebag. They ought to go ...