UPDATE IV: "It is not at all surprising to learn that — during a conversation that shouldn’t have been happening, one that was photographed by a Russian journalist who shouldn’t have been there — the president revealed details of an ongoing intelligence operation. Once again, this was not part of a deliberate plan. Instead, it happened because the president is a braggart who wanted to show off his access to “great intel” and to impress his important guests.
All of this was not only predictable — it was also predicted. Read, again, the statement issued by 50 prominent Republican national security experts issued last August. Note that it was not “pro-Clinton” or left-wing, or even ideological at all. It simply pointed out that Trump — a man who would not, under normal circumstances, ever be given a high-level security clearance — was unfit to be president. Here is the central section:
In our experience, a President must be willing to listen to his advisers and department heads; must encourage consideration of conflicting views; and must acknowledge errors and learn from them. A President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation. A President must maintain cordial relationships with leaders of countries of different backgrounds and must have their respect and trust. In our judgment, Mr. Trump has none of these critical qualities. He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Read the Washington Post, The experts were right: Trump isn’t fit to be president.
UPDATE III: "Hypocrisy watch: Trump slipping secrets to Russia is ironic because a major reason that he became president was Hillary Clinton’s private email server. As a candidate, the president constantly said her mishandling of sensitive information was disqualifying. 'This is really, if we bring it up, this is like Watergate, only it’s worse, because here our foreign enemies were in a position to hack our most sensitive national security secrets,' Trump said at a rally last September. 'We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘confidential.’' (Philip Bump rounds up a bunch more examples like this.)
The president tweeted dozens of times last year about Clinton’s mishandling of classified information:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpHillary Clinton should not be given national security briefings in that she is a lose cannon with extraordinarily bad judgement & insticts.7:57 PM - 29 Jul 2016 · Denver, CO
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpThe real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American!7:13 AM - 15 Feb 2017
He even quoted Comey in this one from last July:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpCrooked Hillary Clinton and her team "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." Not fit!6:12 AM - 6 Jul 2016
Read the Washington Post, Trump’s chaotic White House once again makes a bad story worse.
UPDATE II: "For the second time in a week, President Trump is in hot water — this time for sharing highly classified information with Russia during an Oval Office meeting last week. And for the second time in a week, he stepped forward to defend himself in an entirely unhelpful and contradictory way."
Read the Washington Post, Trump just threw his top advisers under the bus … again.
Read also the Washington Post, The White House isn’t denying that Trump gave Russia classified information — not really.
UPDATE: "President Trump appeared to acknowledge Tuesday that he revealed highly classified information to Russia — a stunning confirmation of a Washington Post story and a move that contradicted his own White House team after it scrambled to deny the report.
Trump's tweets tried to explain away the news, which emerged late Monday, that he had shared sensitive, “code-word” information with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a White House meeting last week, a disclosure that intelligence officials warned could jeopardize a crucial intelligence source on the Islamic State. . .
Trump's tweets undercut his administration's frantic effort Monday night to contain the damaging report. The White House trotted out three senior administration officials — national security adviser H.R. McMaster, deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — to attack the reports.
The president's admission follows a familiar pattern. Last week, after firing FBI Director James B. Comey, the White House originally claimed that the president was acting in response to a memo provided by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.
But in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Trump later admitted that he had made the decision to fire Comey well before Rosenstein's memo, in part because he was frustrated by the director's investigation into possible collusion between his presidential campaign and the Russian government."
Read the Washington Post, Trump acknowledges ‘facts’ shared with Russian envoys during White House meeting.
Is Trump a Russian agent (albeit
an unwitting agent -- Putin has the
kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information)?
Or just
really, really stupid?
I say both, but you decide.
Read the Washington Post,
Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador, which noted that:
"In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. 'I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day' . . .
Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat. . .
Trump has repeatedly gone off-script in his dealings with high-ranking foreign officials, most notably in his contentious introductory conversation with the Australian prime minister earlier this year. He has also faced criticism for seemingly lax attention to security at his Florida retreat, Mar-a-Lago, where he appeared to field preliminary reports of a North Korea missile launch in full view of casual diners.
U.S. officials said that the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders, but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points — and often ignores those.
'He seems to get in the room or on the phone and just goes with it, and that has big downsides,' the second former official said. 'Does he understand what’s classified and what’s not? That’s what worries me.'"
Bragging and
freelancing, typical characteristics of Trump, a
psycho-
narcissistic con man
Read also:
Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent?,
Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent? (Cont.) and
Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent? (Cont., Part 2).
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