Outspoken American businessman Donald Trump has dismissed whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “grandstander” for disclosing the top secret surveillance program of the National Security Agency.

“I didn’t like him, to me he looks like a grandstander,” Trump said on Fox News.

Trump added that there are “no winners” in the debate about disclosing these secrets to the media.

“I don’t like people like (Snowden) because there could be a national security concern and there probably is,” he said. “At the same time, what he’s doing is wrong and I think also what the government is doing is wrong.”

The U.S. has said it will investigate the leak, which was made public first in the Guardian newspaper late last week.

Snowden told the newspaper that the National Security Agency has been stockpiling of millions of phone records from U.S. citizens.

It also has a program code-named PRISM, which gives the agency direct access to files from the servers of major tech companies such as Google and Facebook.

The government’s vast data mining operation is supposedly designed to anticipate and prevent terror plots.

Snowden, 29, disclosed the leak after he had flown to Hong Kong, and Congressman Peter King immediately called for Hong Kong to extradite the 29-year-old Snowden so he can face “the full extent” of the law.

However, Snowden is being hailed for his bravery in social media.

One of his biggest supporters is Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in the 1970s.

Tweeted Ellsberg: “There has not been in American history a more important leak than Snowden’s.”

On CNN, the former military analyst said: “I think he’s done an enormous service — incalculable service. It can’t be overestimated to this democracy.”

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