The negligence and incompetence of America’s Reality TV show president is having serious consequences in the realm of national security. The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump revealed “highly classified information” during a meeting last week with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the White House. The Post writes that:
“Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.”
Putin got his man:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were invited to the White by Trump the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey. That’s something his Russian guests must have appreciated as it would derail the investigation into their interference with the 2016 presidential election. But what Trump disclosed during the meeting could have far reaching consequences.
According to sources familiar with the meeting, Trump was boasting that “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.” As if to prove it he told them about a threat that the United States could only have learned through a key espionage partner. In the course of his bragging Trump revealed “the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.” This is information so sensitive that the Post is “withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”
Even if Trump held back on some specifics, the exchange was still dangerous because Russia would be able figure out our sources or techniques just with what Trump told them. And betraying the confidence of our partner would likely cause them to refrain from sharing information with us in the future.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
The Post noted that “Senior White House officials appeared to recognize quickly that Trump had overstepped and moved to contain the potential fallout.” But significant damage was already certainly done. The disclosure of this sort of data to a hostile foreign country’s top officials is something that was predictable in the election of a novice like Trump. And now he’s proving that our greatest fears about him are coming to pass.
