Some personal reflections on the WaPo story claiming that Trump compromised security
The first thing that occurs to me is that, even though people distrust the press much more than in years past, the press is still remarkably powerful. When a newspaper such as the WaPo decides to print a story about a president and to frame it in a certain way, that dictates not only what we’ll all be talking about for quite a while, but how vast numbers of people will see it. And when the press is out to get a president—as it has been with Trump—it will ferret out every negative thing it can, and spin it in the most negative way. The attack will be coordinated and relentless, and it will draw at least some blood.
Just think for a moment if the situation had been reversed—if, for example, President Obama (or a President Hillary Clinton) had done whatever it is that Trump is alleged to have done. Crickets. Or, if the news somehow came out, rationalizing and/or sweeping under the rug. Maybe even praise for “resetting” with Russia. Basically, it would not have been reported at all, or if reported it would not have been reported in the same way.
It turns out also that this highly sensitive information Trump is alleged to have divulged is the sort of thing most people would be glad was shared with the Russians. And although that’s not really the issue and doesn’t make revealing classified information right, it certainly could influence the way people receive the story:
[The WaPo] did this with an article citing “anonymous sources” who claimed that the president ”” whether in a fit of braggadocio, stupidity, or in partial payment for Moscow’s meddling with the election the Post leaves to the reader to decide ”” passed on exceedingly sensitive and restricted intelligence to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister in a meeting last week.
The information was so top secret, said the Post, that America hadn’t even shared the information with key allies.
All of this conjured images of Trump letting the Russians in on something really big, like exactly when all the generals take smoko at NORAD (“I tell you Vlad, they’re out there every morning at 9:30 like clockwork. And if they’re talking about what happened on Last Resort, they’re not back at their stations for, like, half an hour, easy.”)
And it immediately set commentators abuzz, with everyone who’d just settled down over the firing of FBI Director James Comey once again demanding Trump’s impeachment, this time for grievously damaging national security.
But as so often happens, the extent of what Trump actually told the Russians reality may be a bit more pedestrian.
The information in question is now said to have been about ISIS plots to sneak a bomb on to an airliner in a laptop, a plot device easily imagined by any Hollywood TV writer or paperback spy thriller author.
And who, pray tell, were these “anonymous sources”? If they constituted people who weren’t at the meeting, how would thy know, and are they guilty of a security breach by telling the WaPo? And if it was someone at the meeting, then who?
Taking a step back in time, there were many reasons I did not want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2016. I aired them quite fully on this blog during the primaries. After his nomination, I tried to adjust, and have been pleased to note that many of his actions as president have been better than I thought they would be (I have discussed many of those here, too). But one thing that has never changed, and what forms some of the basis of my objection to Trump, has been that Trump has some character and veracity issues that are real and not merely the result of being framed by MSM reportage.
I wrote about that here, too, during the primary. In fact, some of what I wrote lost me some readers over the past year and a half. And I haven’t changed my mind about those things. The doubts about his veracity make him a worse president than he might otherwise be, not a better one. They may make it harder for him to win people over to his side who are not already predisposed to be there. They make the negative stories designed to whip up fear about him in his role as president more believable, rather than less.
Quite a few readers and commenters here would probably disagree with that last sentence of mine. “No, the over-the-top and unfair press commentary makes people more sympathetic to Trump, not less.” And I would have agreed with them—in fact, I did agree with them, until recently—except that President Trump has done too many disturbing things lately that feed into the perceptions of him as a loose cannon and an unreliable reporter of events. And some of those things have nothing to do with media reports, they are his very own tweets.
By the way, can you imagine going back in time to about twenty years ago and reading those last two sentences of mine? President Trump? Tweets?? What on earth??? But here we are, in a world in which Trump is indeed president (and in many ways not doing a bad job of it at all), but is hurting his own reputation with some of his tweets (although I must admit that some of his tweets also help him). And the press would dearly love to destroy him.
I have gotten to the point where, when I scan the MSM outlets or memeorandum for the day’s headline stories, the entire enterprise seems more than ever before like mindless propaganda to me. And whether that phenomenon hurts Trump in the end or helps him, I can’t imagine that such a high a level of jusified distrust and weariness of the media is a good place for America to be.
There’s a long list already forming of all the top secret stuff Obama told to “allies” and don’t even bother with Clinton’s leaky ship of nonstate. Obama identified the CIA Chief in Afghanistan and provided Hollywood with inside knowledge about the bin Laden raid so they could make their big movie.
What was the nature of the info that Trump supposedly spilled to the Russians? It’s identified in all sort of scary top secrety ways but it appears to boil down to details about an Islamic State terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft. Now that’s just being civilized, sharing that. Plus it’s stuff we’d already heard about. Stuff you’d want to share with a potential ally to get them to work with you against ISIS rather than just propping up their local dictator in the area.
Plus, after all the whinging about the “top secret” nature of the information and the need to protect the source that provided it, the NY Times outed Israel as the source. In advance of Trump’s visit there, of course. Because shameless partisan mudslinging uber alles and no credibility whatsoever. Why would anyone believe anything these people report anymore? Even for those who absolutely hate Trump, don’t they have any curiosity about whether their emotional investment is sound?
Neo,
This Seth Rich stuff is getting interesting.
So if it pans out that the Seth Rich DNC Emails to Gavin MacFadyen of Wikileaks alliance turns out to be true, how do you figure your friends will re-frame the Russian hacking theme?
They did the same thing to Nixon and Americans cheered it on.
Why would anyone believe anything these people report anymore?
People don’t believe anything from Americans anymore.
US credibility amongst the PaxAmericana allies is near zero.
Tonight it is a full feeding frenzy.
The likely fact is a normal Republican can not get elected president. Trump got elected and will give us lots of conservative judges, a border, a hot stock market, lots of jobs, cheap oil, a strong military and support for the police.
He’s a BS artist and a blow hard. I’ll take it.
If the Dems run him off we get a real conservative VP who knows how to function in government. Then he picks a replacement, another conservative.
Don’t throw me in the briar patch.
The press –and most of my liberal friends– have been so over the top hysterical, I’ve completely tuned it out and have quit looking at the ‘news,’ except the WSJ.
Anecdotally, a couple diehard liberal friends have started complaining about the unrelenting anti Trump hysteria, and frustration they are not hearing any other news. They told me, with dismay, that they were attacked when they expressed that to other people.
Trump is a nincompoop. He keeps proving that over and over and over…
‘The likely fact is a normal Republican can not get elected president.’
Now this is just wrong.
‘The likely fact is a normal Republican can not get elected president.’
ALL of the Republican Party candidates would have done better than Trump (according to almost every poll which measured that)
All one needs to know about the MSM is that Trump is bad because he has 2 scoops of ice cream. Shark jumped now and forever.
Except for the hard left, and the soft left zombies, the msm-dnc is digging the hole deeper. Soon they will be demanding a goverment funded YUGE ladder. I do not like djt’s character, but I love how he makes the mad dog left look even more mad dog, spittle on your screen madder.
Mr. Frank Says:
May 16th, 2017 at 7:46 pm
Don’t throw me in the briar patch.
* *
Meanwhile, the MSM makes out like Brer Rabbit stuck to the Tar Baby.
Esther Says:
May 16th, 2017 at 7:47 pm
The press —and most of my liberal friends— have been so over the top hysterical, I’ve completely tuned it out and have quit looking at the ‘news,’ except the WSJ.
Anecdotally, a couple diehard liberal friends have started complaining about the unrelenting anti Trump hysteria, and frustration they are not hearing any other news. They told me, with dismay, that they were attacked when they expressed that to other people.
**
The world at large probably doesn’t even recognize those references now, thanks to SJWs of the past.
Sigh.
Neo left out my favorite quote from the Morrow article:
“And for what it’s worth, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has denied anything inappropriate was shared with the Russians, though whether the word of a three star general can hold a candle to unnamed sources is an open question.”
Steve D,
I was a supporter of Cruz, but the squishy middle found him too hard edged. I also think Rubio, who is squishy, could have won not just the EC vote, but also the popular vote. Its all water under a bridge over troubled water.
I can remember back in the day when people were worrying about Trump being a dictator. I didn’t think it likely as I believed the MSM would do a good job of keeping him in check. Well, they are on the job. And then some.
We used to get pretty exercised about the things Obama did. Pretty bad things – like the Porkulus bill, the ACA, continuing resolutions in place of budgets that rolled up $10 trillion in federal debt, the Iran deal, pulling out of Iraq prematurely, setting a date certain for pulling out of Afghanistan, failing to enforce his “red line” in Syria, abandoning the CIA operatives in Benghazi, driving the economy into a ditch with regulations/taxes/anti-business stances,
etc., etc. Eight long years of doing things that made us continuously question his motives. And the MSM was singing his praises the whole time.
It’s early in the Trump administration. He’s made some unforced errors, but nothing of the magnitude of Obama. As Mr. Frank says, he will give us “lots of conservative judges, a border, a hot stock market, lots of jobs, cheap oil, a strong military and support for the police.” Bring it on.
We really should consider the players behind the arras.
Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man and creator of Amazon, owns the WaPo, outright and totally.
Carlos Slim (ironically fat), the wealthiest Mexican, owns the largest individual share of NYT common stock.
The very rich are different from you and me.
They have their agendas.
Remember George Soros, who cornered a currency market and made billions; he’s playing games with his loot.
We live in an unusual time, when a rather large number of billionaires bestride the earth like giants, crushing little people underfoot, manipulating the rest. Bloomberg told New York what it may and may not eat.
Elon Musk, another billionaire, seeks to put us all into electric cars, and his company, Tesla, has a much greater market cap than Ford or GM, all based on the future.
Beware and take care. We are bait minnows in their bait buckets. They are shaping our futures. They, not you and me.
Sorry to pop ballons, but no POTUS can provide an ever expanding DOWJIA. It just does not work that way. Yes, the politcical sphere can influence the market and the market can definitely influence the political sphere, but the bottomline is the bottonline. BTW, if one wants to understand the bottomline the BDI tells you what is happenning in the real economy.
Commodities rule. Grains and metals rule far beyond the whims of the day.
BTW, commodities are the real economy. Simply because we all need to eat and everything we buy needs metals and petroleum chemicals. Simple, but for most difficult to understand apparently.
Please tell me you track the cost of copper and wheat. Next corn, soybeans, iron ore, and oil. When commodities are down it looks like good days are here again, but in reality its hard times ahead. Watch the BDI and invest accodingly. Buy low, sell high. Duh.
An interesting addition, by Erick Erickson:
http://theresurgent.com/i-know-one-of-the-sources/
” tend to take these stories about the President with a grain of salt. We have seen key details of a number of salacious stories retracted within 48 hours. The media hates the President so much that they’ll run a negative story about him without very much provocation. Anti-Trump sources embedded within the administration in the career civil service, etc. will leak to the press and confirmation bias sets in.
What sets this story apart for me, at least, is that I know one of the sources. And the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016. But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.
So some of the sources are left with no other option but to go to the media, leak the story, and hope that the intense blowback gives the President a swift kick in the butt. Perhaps then he will recognize he screwed up. The President cares vastly more about what the press says than what his advisers say. That is a real problem and one his advisers are having to recognize and use, even if it causes messy stories to get outside the White House perimeter.
I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.
You can call these sources disloyal, traitors, or whatever you want. But please ask yourself a question – if the President, through inexperience and ignorance, is jeopardizing our national security and will not take advice or corrective action, what other means are available to get the President to listen and recognize the error of his ways?
This is a real problem and I treat this story very seriously because I know just how credible, competent, and serious – as well as seriously pro-Trump, at least one of the sources is.”
* * *
To answer the question: who elected your friend President? It’s still illegal to reveal classified information, no matter how much you want to spank the baby.
This type of narcissistic arrogance is how we got Trump int he first place, and it isn’t going to change him; it will more likely make him double-down on his prerogatives and own judgement.
And there is always another option: resign and write op-eds about the know-nothing President, but without revealing national security intelligence secrets.
I didn’t like this whinging behavior from Obama’s appointees either, who waited until they (or he) retired to write the memoirs bragging about how they would have done things so much better if only he had listened to them.
AesopFan Says:
May 16th, 2017 at 11:53 pm
Neo left out my favorite quote from the Morrow article:
“And for what it’s worth, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has denied anything inappropriate was shared with the Russians, though whether the word of a three star general can hold a candle to unnamed sources is an open question.”
McMaster IS the unnamed source. Heh.
One thing Trump has going for him is that he inherited a strong, growing economy. In contrast, Nixon was besieged by inflation, so much so that he resorted to (unpopular) price and wage controls.
One could argue that the Obama recovery was weak, but again that helps Trump…as slow steady growth is less likely to result in inflation.
Trump can’t get any significant legislation passed. And that’s fine. When one is close to full-employment one can just let the Market take it course. If he got his way with Tax-cuts and Bannon-like stimulus spending on infrastructure, it would like rocket the economy into a boom/bust cycle.
Trump is a case of walking Tourette’s. The best thing he had going for him in the general was Hillary!
The primary was, I submit, more interesting.
My fear was that the mess in Washington was not going to be seen as fixable by the old way of doing things which is how it got messed up in the first place. All the other repubs promised more of the dame, only better and in a different, better direction. So, i figured, a lot of folks would stay home.
Then came Trump with a different approach to campaigning, a different set of promises (“win” instead of a snoozer about tax rate tweaks). in the general, it was clear, had been for years, that the prospective Trump voters were considered by dems as seventeen kinds of losers. She was late to the party when she said what they all thought about “deplorables”. That woke the folks up and got them out to the polls.
“I can’t imagine that such a high a level of jusified distrust and weariness of the media is a good place for America to be.” – Neo
No it isn’t.
But, this ought to be broadened to say there is a high level of distrust in almost all institutions.
Would be nice if trump could bring that trust back, but as it stands, fuhgeddaboudit.
He seems to be stomping on the accelerator almost as much as the msm, in reducing that trust and credibility.
That is a horrible place.
An interesting thought experiment…
What would the GOP reaction be, and the “conservative” media’s too, if this were clinton?
My bet is, it would be VERY similar.
.
This is not to say that two wrongs make a right, but how much of our “trust” is based on who is delivering the message vs the underlying facts to the message itself?
In the end, both media sides sensationalize the news to attract as many eyeballs and ears as they can for their advertisers.
They each have a willing audience to cater their product to, and raising anger / outrage / victimhood is a key emotional draw.
.
They are not necessarily in the “truth” business.
That is up to us, as citizens, to demand and consume that.
On a daily basis, we are each individually are making those choices.
Trump is a case of walking Tourettes.
Agreed, but there’s more to it than lack of control. Brush aside the questions of incompetence and shady business deals, and you still have a person who’s flying by the seat of his pants. How else do you account for the 180 degree turns in policy? He was against the Paris accords and is now ready to sign on. He was against further involvement in the middle east, and then bombs Syria. He promised a wall, and then signs a budget deal specifically preventing its construction. He said Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel, and now backs off. He promised to use American steel in the construction of the Keystone pipeline, and then ignores it.
The pattern is obvious. He is incapable of consistency because he has no center of ideology. He’s like a willow leaning any which way the strongest wind pushes it. The only thing you can count on is his thin skin with the certainty he will immediately strike back at detractors.
How sad.
I guess 24 years of big government democrats and republicans being in charge and the last 8 being run by strongly anti-American democrats led by Obama, and 50 years of liberals being in charge of/destroying education have done their work.
We had one last chance to turn it around with Trump and he’s being nit-picked him to death over things that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if Obama or Clinton was in charge. How can we let the media/education/establishment complex manipulate us this way?
As I said, how sad.
Irv: Amen.
The Other Chuck: well said.
To de-mystify Trump, it’s important to understand that with Trump it’s all about the sale. And what he’s selling is Trump.
He’s not selling exiting NATO, or exiting the Paris Accords, or even conservative judges. (I do think he’s more serious, more of a believer, about border security and economic protectionism) But what Trumps everything is closing the deal.
A few examples: If the deal gets closed by being an isolationist, that works, until flinging some missiles into Syria would actually enhance the chances of closing the deal, so let’s switch to that. If the deal gets closed by promising to make Mexico pay for the border wall, he’ll push that, and when he can’t come through on that, distract, distract, distract with other noise, while continuing to push toward closing the never-ending deal. Cognitive dissonance, gas-lighting, keeping balls always up in the air, and banging, banging, banging away at his enemies keeps things interesting, confusing, and keeps the deal rolling.
The never ending deal, of course, is Trump. He is a VERY BIG DEAL, to himself and those who have bought in. He is all that matters. So don’t look for consistency from him in anything else other than doing whatever he can to keep himself at the center of all the attention and keep the Trump Deal rolling forward.
I never bought in.
I do not trust the WaPo, nor the NYT.
How come everybody has forgotten that there were two other people in that meeting?
“Cognitive dissonance, gas-lighting, keeping balls always up in the air, and banging, banging, banging away at his enemies keeps things interesting, confusing, and keeps the deal rolling.” – Bill
Creating Chaos?
@Richard – which story are you referring to by “that meeting”?
Re: Comey’s meeting w trump?….
“The encounter between Comey and Trump unfolded after the FBI director was in the Oval Office briefing the President along with Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to a source close to Comey who has a copy of the memo. After the briefing, Trump “asked Sessions and Pence to leave,” the source told CNN.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/16/politics/trump-james-comey-memo/
You’re on the wrong post, Big Maq — this is the one about the “compromised security” with the Russians.
@Richard – no problem.
Then, I am indeed on the right thread. It is just that your remark seems aimed at someone, but not sure who.
We have no reason to disbelieve McMaster (though some think he is part of the “establishment”) and Powell. Not sure that I’ve read here anyone discrediting their statements.
BUT, fact is, trump’s had people do his bidding and we later find out that the reality was a shade or two, or three different. Case in point, the rationale for Comey’s firing.
.
That reaches to the core point folks are making here – the ones I presume you are aiming at – that trump himself is creating this environment by his own hand…
“President Trump has done too many disturbing things lately that feed into the perceptions of him as a loose cannon and an unreliable reporter of events. And some of those things have nothing to do with media reports, they are his very own tweets.” – Neo
“The doubts about his veracity make him a worse president than he might otherwise be, not a better one. They may make it harder for him to win people over to his side who are not already predisposed to be there. They make the negative stories designed to whip up fear about him in his role as president more believable, rather than less.”
(Yes, I reversed the order of the quotes, lest some other commenters here wanna make this about “misrepresentation” again.)
Sure, we should give those others the benefit of the doubt, and we shouldn’t just believe what is reported.
But, unless you are already in the bag for trump, regardless of what he does, it is rather hard to take anything he, and by extension, his admin, says about anything.
And THAT is the bigger problem.
Trust and Credibility.
When you don’t have those, it doesn’t matter if you happen to be correct on the specific point in that moment in time.
Folks just won’t believe you.
I would love to hear a comparison of Trump’s lack of truthfulness and shadings as compared to either of the Clintons or Obama. Everyone seems to talk like Trump is to be judged as president in relation to some model of perfection as opposed to in relation to past presidents.
I’m not excusing Trump’s faults but I am trying to put them in perspective. He’s always been a lot closer to the truth about the important things than any of the recent democrats. That’s not the ideal but it’s a hell of a lot better than we’ve been getting previously.
Big Maq I guess I’m being too subtle — there were two Russians in the room, remember. No one has mentioned whether they might have been the leakers.
In any case, i certainly recognize that Trump shoots his mouth off, bloviates, exaggerates, blusters, bullies, takes wildly off-the-wall positions in negotiations, only remembers his side of the story, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, 40 years of law practice has made me more familiar with his type than I ever wanted to be. Fortunately, this has taught me to see through the bullshit.
I find his conduct much more acceptable than someone who looks you in the eye and smoothly and coolly says, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But that’s me. YMMV.
Returning to the main thread, we don’t know what was said at that meeting. We don’t know if it contained any sensitive or classified information. We don’t know if he revealed any sources and methods. We don’t know if the Russians already knew. (It seems likely they did, because the laptop ban is public knowledge and has an obvious source.) We don’t know if it was worth saying to get the Russians on board an anti-ISIS campaign. What we do know is that three highly respected people have said it didn’t happen.
That’s good enough for me.
P.S. Comey should have been fired on January 20th, for taking a dive for Hillary on July 5, 2016. I don’t care if the White House offers a hundred different reasons — Comey had to go!
@Richard – consider this…
“I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.
…
This is a real problem and I treat this story very seriously because I know just how credible, competent, and serious – as well as seriously pro-Trump, at least one of the sources is.“ – Eric Erickson
I know this doesn’t “prove” anything, but would Erickson really be lying about what he was told and about the type of source he has?
Meuller won’t solve this puzzle, but he may be able to put to bed others, hopefully.
And when, Maq, did you stop beating your wife? Oh, you object because that’s hearsay? From an anonymous source? Well, I happen to know that this source is credible, competent, and serious, so he must be telling the truth, right?
If anyone of these anonymous sources has the guts to, as he should, resign and tell his story publically, I’ll start to believe it. Not unless and not until.
Is anyone seriously trying to say that Trump is accidentally damaging our international relations worse than Obama intentionally damaged them?
@Richard – I wish everyone would have the guts.
If they did, they might tell trump to shut the eff up for the good of his presidency, the party and the country.
But they don’t. And, reality is they won’t, for a variety of reasons, good and bad.
.
Of course, in a court of law, you are correct, it is heresay.
But, we don’t have the benefit of courtroom rules to have verified facts placed in front of us either.
What to do?
Do we treat it as fact?
Of course not.
Do we dismiss it out of hand?
Well, in 2012 several tea party groups complained about IRS treatment.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/28/numerous-tea-party-chapters-claim-irs-attempting-to-sabotage-non-profit-status.html
That was dismissed by the left, shortly afterward.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/opinion/the-irs-does-its-job.html
Even after Lois Lerner ineptly dropped her bombshell in 2013, the left still denied it was a problem, no doubt following the WH spin on it.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-i-r-s-and-the-tea-party-where-is-the-scandal
So, how about option 3? Maybe we ought to have a healthy skepticism, with the WH.
Why? Because it is in character with how we’ve seen trump behave for about two years.
It informs us as to the possibility and keep our eyes open for later.
We may never get to the bottom of this. But it may well be a minor point in the overall investigation that Mueller is undertaking.