Trump 17: James Comey and the Goblin of "You're Fired"

[GreyhoundFan]

I love this -- the WaPo clarified what McMaster said: "The White House isn’t denying that Trump gave Russia classified information — not really"

Spoiler

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster just emerged from the White House to declare that The Washington Post’s story about Trump giving highly classified information to Russia “as reported, is false.”

But the rest of McMaster’s statement made clear he wasn’t actually denying the report. And his entire brief statement — punctuated by McMaster walking away without taking shouted questions — speaks volumes.

Here’s what McMaster said:

There’s nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time — at no time — were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the secretary of state, remember it being the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources. And I was in the room. It didn’t happen.

McMaster says that “at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” But The Post’s reporting doesn’t say that they were.

Instead, the report states clearly only that Trump discussed an Islamic State plot and the city where the plot was detected by an intelligence-gathering partner. Officials worried that this information could lead to the discovery of the methods and sources involved, but it didn’t say Trump discussed them.

McMaster’s statement that “the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known” is in the same vein — suggesting The Post has reported something that it hasn’t in order to deny something. Military operations aren’t even alluded to in the story.

At the end, McMaster refers to his own account and that of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and says, “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” But again, he seems to be saying that the thing that didn’t happen is something The Post never actually reported.

At no point in his statement to The Post before the story went live or in his appearance in front of reporters afterward does McMaster say, ‘President Trump didn’t share classified information with Russia’ or anything close to it.

This is actually pretty par-for-course for the White House. When the media has reported based on anonymous sources in the intelligence community, the White House will often deny the reports without pointing to any specifics in the reporting.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer back in February denied an Associated Press report that said a Department of Homeland Security memo showed the administration considered deploying the National Guard to rein in illegal immigration. The White House apparently didn’t respond to requests for comment before the story went live. And we later found out that the memo was preliminary, but real.

...

Spicer issued a similar, “100 percent” denial a few weeks back when The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had sought to block fired former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying before Congress by arguing that her conversations with the president were privileged. But documents showed the administration had indeed asserted such privilege. It was simply rejected by Yates’s lawyer:

David O’Neil, an attorney for Yates, met at the Justice Department to discuss the issue with government officials on Thursday. At the meeting, O’Neil presented a letter in which he said the Justice Department had “advised” him that Yates’s official communications on issues of interest to the House panel are “client confidences” that cannot be disclosed without written consent. O’Neil challenged that interpretation as “overbroad” in the letter.

We’ll see if the White House actually wants to quibble with any specifics in The Post’s reporting. So far, they haven’t cited anything specific that’s false. And that’s pretty telling.

 

 

And Ryan is, of course, tap dancing: "Paul Ryan might regret having said this about Hillary Clinton"

Quote

Update: Ryan said through spokesman Doug Andres: "We have no way to know what was said, but protecting our nation's secrets is paramount. The speaker hopes for a full explanation of the facts from the administration."

...

continued:

Spoiler

In July 2016, few in Washington were more incredulous that the FBI decided not to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime for sending and receiving classified information on her private email server than House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

Ryan issued one of the Republicans' irate statements:

“No one should be above the law. But based upon the director's own statement, it appears damage is being done to the rule of law. Declining to prosecute Secretary Clinton for recklessly mishandling and transmitting national security information will set a terrible precedent. The findings of this investigation also make clear that Secretary Clinton misled the American people when she was confronted with her criminal actions.”

And then he held a news conference, where he asked the Obama administration to stop giving Clinton, who was the Democrats' newly minted presidential nominee, classified briefings. “Individuals who are 'extremely careless,' close quote,” Ryan said, using the term then-FBI director James B. Comey used to describe Clinton's email practices, “should be denied further access to information.” (That proposal never got anywhere). (Ryan's office reached out to underscore that he thought Clinton should be able to receive classified briefings if she became president, since you can't deny presidents classified information.)

The message was clear: Ryan thought the FBI should have charged Clinton for a crime for sending and receiving classified information on a private email server she used exclusively as secretary of state.

Ryan piped up again about this 11 days before the election, when Comey told Congress his team had found new emails related to Clinton that they were looking into. The FBI did not describe it as a reopening of an investigation, but Ryan sure did:

...

We're spending so much time parsing Ryan's words about a candidate in an election that is now over because suddenly, it's not Clinton who is on the receiving end of criticism about the way she handled classified information. It's President Trump.

The Washington Post's ace national security team reported Monday that while in an Oval Office meeting last week with top Russian officials, Trump told them highly classified information about the Islamic State. The information he told to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister is so secret it's not even relayed to some U.S. allies, let alone a country that most intelligence officials think meddled in the U.S. election.

“It is all kind of shocking,” a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials told The Post's Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe. “Trump seems to be very reckless and doesn’t grasp the gravity of the things he’s dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security. And it’s all clouded because of this problem he has with Russia.”

Reckless. That's exactly the word Ryan used in another statement, issued in September, after the FBI released its report of its interview with Clinton. The FBI's investigation demonstrates, Ryan said, “Hillary Clinton’s reckless and downright dangerous handling of classified information during her tenure as secretary of state.”

It's also the exact word that at least one former intelligence official used to describe the fact Trump shared information so secret it requires a code word just to talk about it among U.S. officials.

The Fix's Aaron Blake rounded up their comments to Miller and Jaffe:

“Trump seems to be very reckless, and doesn’t grasp the gravity of the things he’s dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security.” — a former senior U.S. official close to current administration officials

“Russia could identify our sources or techniques.” — a senior U.S. official

“I don’t think that it would be that hard [for Russian spy services] to figure this out.” — a former intelligence official who worked on Russia-related issues

“He seems to get in the room or on the phone and just goes with it — and that has big downsides. Does he understand what’s classified and what’s not? That’s what worries me.” — a former U.S. official

Perhaps “reckless” is in the eye of the beholder. As president, Trump has the authority to declassify government secrets, while anyone else in government (like secretaries of state) does not.

In his initial statement about Trump's comments to Russian officials, Ryan made no attempt to provide cover for the president.

But it's going to take a lot more explaining from Ryan — and all the other Republicans who bashed Clinton, including Trump — why this situation is somehow less careless and less reckless and less dangerous than the one they lambasted Democrats for just a few months ago.

Hypocritical much, Lyan?

[Rachel333]

*sigh*

[GreyhoundFan]

A slew of great tweets from George T:

 

[47of74]

Oh to have been a fly on the wall...

rawstory.com/2017/05/screaming-overheard-in-cabinet-room-meeting-between-spicer-bannon-and-sanders-after-russia-intel-revelation/

Quote

Reporters at the White House on Monday overheard yelling between White House press secretary Sean Spicer, chief White House counsel Steve Bannon, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House Communications Director Michale Dubke, prompting staffers to turn up TV’s to drown out the back-and-forth.

According to BuzzFeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo, the officials walked into the Cabinet Room of the White House shortly after news broke that Donald Trump revealed classified information to the Russian ambassador and Russian foreign minister during a closed-door meeting last week.

Shortly after the meeting, Sanders told the press corps the White House would not comment on the report further. So far, the administration has offered only a tepid denial of the Washington Post report. During an emergency press conference Monday, National Security Adviser HR McMaster insisted, “The story that came out tonight as reported, is false.”

He added the president never revealed sources or methods, but did not address the issue of revealing classified information.

 

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, 47of74 said:

Oh to have been a fly on the wall...

rawstory.com/2017/05/screaming-overheard-in-cabinet-room-meeting-between-spicer-bannon-and-sanders-after-russia-intel-revelation/

 

They all need naps. TT needs a nap in an orange jump suite in a tiny tiny room with bars.

[nvmbr02]

I found this a bit entertaining. I mean it is completely disgusting that this is happening but good on whoever thought of this! 

Assuming it isn't photoshopped. I wish I could see it for myself. 

[onekidanddone]

I need to get some sleep.  Am I going to wake up tomorrow and see "TT resigns" or "TT frog marched across the south lawn" on the WoPo?  I girl can dream can't she?

[nvmbr02]

58 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I need to get some sleep.  Am I going to wake up tomorrow and see "TT resigns" or "TT frog marched across the south lawn" on the WoPo?  I girl can dream can't she?

I don't think he will resign yet, he is too delusional. 

[RoseWilder]

4 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

I don't think he will resign yet, he is too delusional. 

I actually think being delusional is the reason why he might resign. I think in his little pea-brain, he might believe that everyone will drop their investigations into the Russia scandal if he resigns. 

[47of74]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

I need to get some sleep.  Am I going to wake up tomorrow and see "TT resigns" or "TT frog marched across the south lawn" on the WoPo?  I girl can dream can't she?

I'm hoping for the latter.  Especially if it's filmed and twitter blows up with videos of it.  Of course I'd settle for the former. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The only realistic way to stop Trump"

Spoiler

The appalling truth about the Trump administration can be found in something Maya Angelou once said to Oprah Winfrey: “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are?”

The chaos and dysfunction we have seen since Jan. 20 constitute, I fear, the new normal. Anyone holding out hope for some magical transition from lunacy into sanity will surely be disappointed. President Trump has shown the nation who he is.

There are leading Republicans, people whose integrity I respect, who have been telling me since the inauguration that the administration is on the cusp of settling down and that Trump is starting to appreciate the solemnity of his new role. One such person who is in regular contact with the president told me the administration had “finally hit the reset button” — just days before Trump rashly fired FBI Director James B. Comey in an act compared to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” Trump’s honorable well-wishers are in denial.

Other supporters, including most Republican members of Congress, are being dangerously cynical. With majorities in both chambers, they hope to use Trump to enact a far-right agenda of huge tax cuts for the wealthy, massive reductions in government aid for the poor and across-the-board deregulation. To get what they want, they are willing to pretend the emperor is wearing clothes.

Imagine the reaction had President Barack Obama fired Comey while the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton. Articles of impeachment would have been drawn up within hours.

For Democrats and others who opposed Trump’s candidacy, there is no solace to be taken in the Trump campaign promises that sounded vaguely progressive. In early rallies, he flirted with the idea of universal medical care, which eventually morphed into a pledge of health insurance “for everybody.” But he threw his full support behind the House attempt to snatch insurance away from at least 24 million people and cut Medicaid by some $800 billion. His budget director recently mused that diabetics are to blame for their own preexisting condition.

The most significant single accomplishment of the administration — putting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court — is not anything progressives are likely to celebrate. And Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is trying to reverse the progress the Obama administration made on ending mass incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses.

Meanwhile, Trump promised an “America First” foreign policy of nonintervention. But he ordered a military strike in Syria, drawing us deeper into that bloody conflict, and has decided to send more troops to Afghanistan. Rather than emphasize human rights, he has had warm words of support for autocrats and strongmen such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to visit the White House on Tuesday. Trump’s bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin smolders on.

There is no silver lining that I can discern. There is no realistic hope of sudden salvation.

Thinking some transgression or another will eventually prove to be a tipping point for Republicans is logical but not realistic. The see-no-evil GOP response to the Comey firing is instructive. Trump said during the campaign that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose popular support. For House Republicans to impeach him, presumably there would have to be multiple victims.

There are those who entertain the fantasy that Trump will get bored or frustrated and eventually resign. But he’s already bored and frustrated with the drudgery of governing, and he has developed coping mechanisms — he stages campaign-style rallies, chews out his hapless staff, vents on Twitter. When he invited House members to the White House to celebrate that awful health-care bill, he interrupted his speech to say, “Hey, I’m president! Can you believe it, right?” He’s not going to voluntarily give that up.

If news reports are correct, he is mulling a substantial shake-up of his White House staff. But no communications team is going to look good while having to defend the crazy, indefensible things Trump regularly says. No chief of staff can institute orderly processes if Trump is going to ignore them and fly by the seat of his pants. Trump is used to running things a certain way. He’s not going to change.

We are where we are. Democrats need to flip one or both houses of Congress next year to slow this runaway train. It won’t stop itself.

 

So many good points, but the one that is just so freaking true: "Imagine the reaction had President Barack Obama fired Comey while the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton. Articles of impeachment would have been drawn up within hours."

[nvmbr02]

30 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

I actually think being delusional is the reason why he might resign. I think in his little pea-brain, he might believe that everyone will drop their investigations into the Russia scandal if he resigns. 

Perhaps. I feel he isn't there yet. He is too wrapped up in his delusions. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to be wrong. I am 14 hours ahead of east coast time so a lot changes here in the middle of the night. I would love to wake up to that breaking news one of these days. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Ain't it great? "When President Trump’s bodyguard revealed Jim Mattis’s private cellphone number"

Spoiler

This Is Not Normal. It’s a mantra among politics-watchers, an attempt to force ourselves to see clearly through the toxic levels of absurdity caking Washington these days. The poker-faced way the news is generally reported, it’s feared, will normalize (for example) that the president is reportedly asking federal employees to swear loyalty to him personally, notwithstanding their oaths of loyalty to the country. So it’s relatively difficult, on this side of the screen, to get across that these days things are basically always bonkers.

So I’m helping by sharing this story, today’s entry in This Is Not Normal.

We got a call Friday from a reader named Paul Redmond that The Post had accidentally published Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s private cell phone number.

A story about President Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller, Redmond said, was accompanied by a photograph of the two of them walking on White House grounds. The bodyguard was holding a stack of papers, and, according to the caller, on the outside of those papers was a yellow sticky note that said “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis” and had a phone number.

This of course sounds impossible. Way more care than that is taken around the president, right? The Secret Service is good at secrecy, generally. So I thanked the guy for the call and dubiously pulled up the photo in question. With the monitor turned 90 degrees and the photo blown up, indeed, I could make out a number and what might be “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis,” if you have better eyesight than mine even when I squint.

I called. I got the voice mail. It was him.

Yes, of course, the president’s bodyguard — the guy famous for punching someone outside of Trump Tower, the guy who according to the story has the president’s complete trust — is employing the yellow sticky note system of information security. I got the tingly sensation that means someone important should know this and told my co-worker Anna and then my boss and one of the reporters who wrote the article.

The Post has now replaced the picture in that article. I’m not sure what the protocol is, other than getting the secretary of defense a new phone number. We should feel lucky Paul Redmond of Orange County, Calif., saw it before the Russians. As far as we know.

Nothing. Is. Normal.

The yellow sticky note of information security. Heaven help us all.

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

I actually think being delusional is the reason why he might resign. I think in his little pea-brain, he might believe that everyone will drop their investigations into the Russia scandal if he resigns. 

Sadly, I have to disagree with you. He is a megalomaniac, and he will never resign.

Impeachment is the only way to get him out. And even then they'll have to drag him out kicking and screaming all the way... 

[fraurosena]

Our daily WUT:

 

 

Yes, he did it again. After McMaster denied it to the press, the toddler is admitting to doing exactly what he's being accused of. Giving highly classified information to the Russians is completely justifiable.

What the fuck will it take for the repubs to act?

[fraurosena]

How true this is. I wish everybody realized it.

Trump doesn’t embody what’s wrong with Washington. Pence does.

Quote

When history holds its trial to account for the Donald Trump presidency, Trump himself will be acquitted on grounds of madness. History will look at his behavior, his erratic and childish lying and his flamboyant ignorance of history itself and pronounce the man, like George III, a cuckoo for whom restraint, but not punishment, was necessary. Such will not be the case for Mike Pence, the toady vice president and the personification of much that has gone wrong in Washington.

On any given day, Pence will do his customary spot-on imitation of a bobblehead. Standing near Trump in the Oval Office, he will nod his head robotically as the president says one asinine thing after another and then, maybe along with others, he will be honored with a lie or a version of the truth so mangled by contradictions and fabrications that a day in the White House is like a week on LSD.

I pick on Pence because he is the most prominent and highest-ranked of President Trump’s lackeys. Like with all of them, Pence’s touching naivete and trust are routinely abused. He vouches for things that are not true — no talk of sanctions between Mike Flynn and the Russians, for instance, or more recently the reason James B. Comey was fired as FBI director. In both instances, the president either lied to him or failed to tell him the truth. The result was the same: The vice president appeared clueless.

I don’t feel an iota of sympathy for Pence. He was among a perfidious group of political opportunists who pushed Trump’s candidacy while having to know that he was intellectually, temperamentally and morally unfit for the presidency. They stuck with him as he mocked the disabled, belittled women, insulted Hispanics, libeled Mexicans and promiscuously promised the impossible and ridiculous — all that “Day One” nonsense like how the wall would be built and Mexico would pay for it.

I also have little sympathy for Sean Spicer, who plays the role of a bullied child. Trump routinely sends him out to lie to the American people, which he has done ever since his insistence that the inaugural crowd was bigger than the photos showed. He persists at his job even though Trump broadly hints that he will soon fire him. When Spicer is gone, he will be easily replaced. Washington is full of people who have no honor and no pride, either.

I think of Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Wilbur Ross, at Commerce. What possessed them to back Trump for the GOP nomination? Didn’t they know the sort of man he is? Did they think a lower tax rate and fewer regulations are worth risking American democracy and our standing in the world? When they watched the bizarre way Trump sacked Comey, were they proud of their candidate?

The swamp that Trump kept mentioning in the campaign is not realdoly one of tangled bureaucratic mangroves, but of moral indifference. Washington always had a touch of that — after all, its business is politics — but Trump and his people have collapsed the space between lies and truth. The president uses one and then the other — whatever works at the time.

The president cannot be trusted. He cannot be believed. He has denigrated the news media, not for its manifest imperfections but for its routine and obligatory search for the truth. He has turned on the judiciary for its fidelity to the law and, once, for the ethnic heritage of a judge. Trump corrupts just about everything he touches.

From most of the Republican Party comes not a whisper of rebuke. The congressional leadership is inert, cowed, scurrying to the White House for this or that ceremonial picture, like members of the erstwhile Politburo flanking Stalin atop Lenin’s mausoleum. They are appalled, but mute. They want to make the best of a bad situation, I know, and they fear the voters back home, but their complicity ought to be obvious even to them.

America is already worse off for Trump’s presidency. He was elected to make America great again, but his future is more like other nations’ sordid past. His own party has been sullenly complicit, showing how little esteem many politicians place in our most cherished values, not the least of them honesty and dignity. For all of them, an accounting is coming. When they are asked by history what they did during the Trump years, the worst of them will confess that they bobbled their heads like dumb dolls, while the best will merely say they kept their heads down.

I actually think it is even worse than this article suggests. Because bobbleheads have no agency in and of themselves. They just unthinkingly bobble along.

But Pence, Spicer, Mnuchin, Lyan, McTurtle, and all the others, have agency, and do think. They are bobbing their heads, not out of respect for or true belief in their presidunce, but out of expediency and a sense of personal gain. 

[fraurosena]

After firing Comey and having the Russians over in the Oval Office the very next day to share highly classified information, guess who's visiting the White House today?

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. That's right. The Turkish wannabe dictator.

I wonder which classified information will he be sharing this time?

[fraurosena]

Today is our lucky day. We have two WUT's!

Yes. He really went there.

Trying to distract from his disastrous admissions in previous tweets, obviously. UGH.

Where's my painful eyeroll gif again... ah, here it is:

[sawasdee]

 

Quote

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/05/16/mcmaster-and-tillerson-are-complicit-in-trumps-dishonesty-so-must-they-resign/?utm_term=.9f35df37600e

On Monday evening, national security adviser H.R. McMaster put his reputation, honed over decades, on the line to issue a non-denial denial — claiming that The Post’s story was wrong because President Trump did not disclose to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador “sources and methods.” The Post did not say anything of the sort, but rather, accurately reported that Trump revealed highly classified material obtained from an ally — the disclosure of which would endanger our relationship with our ally and jeopardize the means by which we obtained the information.

As he apparently did with obstruction of justice regarding the firing of James Comey, the president “confessed” in a tweet this morning, saying, “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.” He added: “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.” In one fell swoop, Trump revealed his abject unfitness and exposed McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell — all who personally attempted to knock down the story — as dishonest hacks.

It is not unreasonable to ask whether McMaster, a lieutenant general who was previously seen as one of the few credible voices in the administration, can now serve the country and protect it from an unfit president only by resigning. “You know, that is a hard question to answer. Of course, I would not have gone in to begin with, but once in, people have conflicting loyalties, I think,” says former ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman. “One is to the nation and trying to ensure that the country remains secure and that the normal business of government is attended to, the other, of course, is to their conscience.” He adds, “H.R. got sent out yesterday because of his stature and the respect in which he is held for honesty and integrity. Of course, what he did has ended up sullying his reputation and undercutting his standing. At this point, I think the calculus has to be how can my resignation actually help bring about a positive result?” He concluded, “If he just quits to show he really is pure, doesn’t that seem like an act of moral vanity? Perhaps the right thing is to wait until a resignation becomes part of a push to either force a resignation or the invocation of the 25th Amendment.”

 

Quote

Spoiler

 

 

Quote

 

 

On the other hand, Tillerson — who just Sunday claimed he would never sacrifice his “values” — has shown himself to be of little value to the country. His greatest contribution to the country would now be to quit.

Whatever they decide, three public servants have jettisoned their credibility in service of an unfit president. Frequent Trump critic and former State Department official Eliot Cohen writes:

Now, what Tillerson, Powell, and McMaster said are not quite lies, but they are the kind of parsed half-truths that are as bad, and in some cases worse. This is how one’s reputation for veracity is infected by the virulent moral bacteria that cover Donald Trump. Friends will watch, pained and incredulous, as they realize that one simply cannot assume that anything these senior subordinates of the president say is the truth. And having stretched, manipulated, or artfully misrepresented the truth once, these officials will do it again and again. They will be particularly surprised when they learn that most people assume that as trusted subordinates of the president, they lie not as colorfully as he does, but just as routinely. Perhaps the worst will be the moment when these high officials can no longer recognize their own characters for what they once were.

What is more, they are now useless surrogates. The patina of independence and integrity has dissolved, revealing them to be no more reliable than Sean Spicer.

Trump’s candor underscores how clueless he remains about his egregious betrayal of an ally, an act that will diminish U.S. access to intelligence and potentially endanger those who provided the underlying intelligence. Republicans have not been moved to date to take on Trump, in effect doing nothing to defend the country against a president who poses a danger to our institutions and security. Now would be the appropriate time to get off the Trump train and name a select committee whose job it will be to determine whether Congress should move ahead to impeachment. If they do not act now — and I have little reason to believe they will — they do not deserve to hold power. What is more, they will leave a legacy of complicity in whatever damage Trump causes before leaving office.

 

Jennifer Rubin taking on the rest of the administration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Penny]

With all these leaks we have been hearing about, it has to be only the tip of the iceberg. I just wonder what things we have not heard. What will it take to get the Republicans to say "Your fired!"  

[fraurosena]

Trump will have to navigate diplomatic land mines abroad. Here’s how he’s preparing.

Here are my comments to some of the highlights of this longish article.

Quote

As the White House was engulfed by a crisis of its own making — the abrupt firing of the FBI director — President Trump received an unlikely visitor: Henry Kissinger, the Republican Party’s leading elder statesman, who came to deliver a tutorial on foreign affairs last Wednesday ahead of the president’s first overseas trip.

Ah, and we so trust that the toddler will take his advice!

Quote

Despite the maelstrom — and the president’s personal obsession with the Comey saga — Trump still made time to start preparing for a trip that could become a resounding triumph or go horribly awry with just one mistake.

But will he confine himself to only one mistake? That's wishful thinking!

Quote

On foreign soil, Trump will have to navigate diplomatic land mines — from negotiating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians to reassuring jittery European allies to following protocol in greeting Pope Francis.

“He’s going to be in the spotlight, under the microscope, and for a lot of people in the world this will be a chance to see him ‘in action,’ ” said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “In part because the expectations are modest, he can more than meet them. If the trip is simply normal, then it’s a success.”

Trump’s advisers say the president understands the stakes and is taking his preparation seriously. His team deliberately scaled back his public schedule in the two weeks leading up to his planned Friday departure, even though much of his time last week was eaten up by the Comey drama and talks about shaking up his West Wing staff.

Modest expectations? If the trip is simply normal? Holy fuck. Remember, he's talking about the president of the United States here...

Quote

National security adviser H.R. McMaster, previewing the trip to reporters last Friday, said it has three core purposes: “First, to reaffirm America’s global leadership. Second, to continue building key relationships with world leaders. And, third, to broadcast a message of unity to America's friends and to the faithful of three of the world's greatest religions.”

Yeah, good luck with that. First, he has been eroding America's global leadership since he came into office. Second, he has been building key relationships with the world's dictators. And, third, he's been broadcasting a message of 'no moose-lambs allowed' since he began running for office.

Quote

“This might be the first foreign trip where the president will tweet from abroad,” said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who served as Mitt Romney’s chief policy adviser during his 2012 presidential campaign. “How do we deal with that? There are certain conventions and precedents we adhere to when on foreign soil. Is this a dictum the president will maintain?”

How telling is this apprehension of the presidunce's possible tweeting from abroad...

 

 

17 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Republicans have not been moved to date to take on Trump, in effect doing nothing to defend the country against a president who poses a danger to our institutions and security. Now would be the appropriate time to get off the Trump train and name a select committee whose job it will be to determine whether Congress should move ahead to impeachment.

Alas, just wishful thinking, I'm afraid. They are still very much blinded by their sudden and quite unexpected rise to power, and are holding on to it for dear life without thinking of the consequences to country - or party, for that matter. 

 

[AnywhereButHere]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-staff-‘hiding’-as-russia-chaos-engulfs-west-wing/ar-BBBbjrN?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnbcrd

I have to imagine that during any presidency, the staff at some point wants to hide. In a highly sensitive job like that, no one can go without stepping in it at some point. This staff, however, is making a career out of it. Who knew that the main selling point on your resume was to excel at Hide and Seek when you were a kid.

And then there's this section from the article. No, you dumbshit! He was a hot mess during the campaign. HOW DID YOU ALL NOT SEE IT!

Quote

Intelligence experts worried during last year’s presidential campaign that Trump’s particular brand of brash straight-talk might put key secrets at risk. “My concern with Trump will be that he inadvertently leaks, because as he speaks extemporaneously, he’ll pull something out of his hat that he heard in a briefing and say it,” a former senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast last year.

Some administration officials who supported Trump during the campaign said they were appalled at his apparent divulging of U.S. secrets, and considered it a break from his “America First” campaign mantra.

“With news like this I’m beginning to wonder why Trump ran in the first place and if he really cares about the country,” said a senior Trump appointee involved in counter-ISIS policymaking. “I miss candidate Trump. Now he’s just a pathetic mess.”

 

[47of74]

Way to go Orange Fuckwad.  You now have our allies thinking twice about telling us shit.

kcrg.com/content/news/Trump-defends-sharing-information-with-Russians-422506124.html

Quote

A senior European intelligence official tells The Associated Press that his country might stop sharing information with the United States if it confirms President Donald Trump shared classified details with Russian officials.

The official said Tuesday that doing so "could be a risk for our sources."

The official spoke only on condition that neither he nor his country be identified, because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

 

[sawasdee]

And thus it begins - soon the US Intelligence community will find itself isolated, or information shared only on an unofficial, informal one to-one basis, with the understanding that no sources - even country of origin - are revealed.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s bizarre Russia tweetstorm digs his hole deeper"

Spoiler

On Monday afternoon, The Post broke the bombshell news that President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in an Oval Office meeting last week. Multiple administration officials denied the broad contours of the story, albeit carefully. This morning, Trump suddenly materialized on Twitter and appeared to confirm that, yes, something like this did indeed happen:

...

Many have argued that, by confirming that he did share information with the Russians, Trump undercut his own staff’s damage control on this story. National security adviser H.R. McMaster had responded by claiming that the Post story was “false,” and asserting that “the president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation,” and that “at no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed.”

However, in one sense, Trump’s new tweets are not necessarily inconsistent with McMaster’s claims. Trump’s tweets don’t concede that he divulged highly classified information. The Post story reported that the information Trump shared had been furnished by a U.S. partner via a very sensitive intel-sharing arrangement; that the partner had not given permission for it to be shared; that the breach puts that partner’s cooperation at risk; and, of course, that the info is highly classified.

Trump’s tweets did not concede any of those points, just as McMaster didn’t. Indeed, on Tuesday an administration spokesman flatly denied that Trump’s tweets conceded that he exposed classified information.

But the problem is twofold. First, Trump did go farther than McMaster, in several key respects. By conceding that he “shared” information with Russia, and by suggesting that he had the “absolute right” to do this, Trump invites questions as to whether he might have been referring to classified information. After all, as was widely observed Monday, it is technically legal for the president to disclose or declassify such information, and Trump’s tweet may have been asserting the “absolute right” to do this. Why assert an “absolute right” if he didn’t do this?

Second, neither Trump’s nor McMaster’s response actually contested key aspects of the Post story, and now that Trump has flatly stated that he “shared” information with the Russians, this requires more clarification. The Post reported that Trump had revealed details of an Islamic State terrorist threat, including the city where the threat was detected; and that he had exposed “an intelligence stream that has provided critical insight into the Islamic State,” which “could hinder the United States’ and its allies’ ability to detect future threats.”

But McMaster claimed only that Trump had not disclosed specific sources, sidestepping the question of whether he’d disclosed information drawn from them, which could be compromising in its own right.

This distinction could matter. Here’s why: Trump’s tweets raise the possibility that Trump did not know that the information he was divulging was classified, or that their disclosure could have severe consequences. The Lawfare blog points out that Trump’s reason for allegedly disclosing the information really matters. Did Trump do it for some national security purpose, or did he do it out of pure carelessness? Trump’s tweets suggest it may have been both of these. He seems to assert that he had a reason for “sharing” said information with Russia, but also seems to hint (with the use of “absolute right”) that he may have disclosed classified info in doing so, without knowing it at the time. The New York Times account raises this possibility:

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump wittingly disclosed such highly classified information. He — and possibly other Americans in the room — may have not been aware of the sensitivity of what he was sharing. It was only after the meeting, when notes on the discussion were circulated among National Security Council officials, that it was flagged as too sensitive to be shared, even among many American officials, the former official said.

As Lawfare’s piece points out, if this was done through sheer carelessness, it’s a serious problem: “It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.” Yet Trump has now clearly opened the door to this being a legitimate possibility. Which means demands for further clarification of what, precisely, happened in that meeting will intensify. As they should.

...

 

 

Also: "This is why Trump’s loose tongue has compromised U.S. security"

Spoiler

On Monday night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a meeting at the White House. Specifically, he is said to have described the details of an Islamic State threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft. The information itself was reportedly provided by a close Middle Eastern ally.

Much of the controversy has to do with the fact that Trump allegedly provided the information to Russia, a U.S. adversary with which he and some of his associates have alleged ties. However, in doing so, he also set back U.S. counterterrorism efforts against the Islamic State as well as al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The immediate damage

Intelligence officials are usually very careful not to reveal “sources and methods” — the sources of information, and the methods used to collect it. This is for obvious reasons. If the identity of a person who was the source of clandestine information is revealed, then that person’s life could be put at risk. Similarly, if the methods used to gather information secretly are revealed, then adversaries may be able to protect against them in the future. This is why people have been asking whether the president compromised the sources and methods used to collect the intelligence he shared.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster said, “At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.” However, this narrow denial does not discount the possibility that information was disclosed that could enable Russia to infer the sources and methods through which information was acquired. By revealing the city where the information was collected, he also may have enabled Moscow to determine the ally that provided it.

The most direct and immediate impact may be to jeopardize a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State, thereby making it more difficult to detect and thwart terrorist plots. It is also possible that Moscow could use the information to its advantage in various ways that harm the United States or its allies.

As bad as the exposure of sources and methods would be on its own terms, the long-term consequences for counterterrorism are even worse. This is because Trump divulged information collected by a U.S. ally, without its permission. This was a breach of trust that is likely to damage not only the intelligence relationship with the country in question, but also with other countries.

The U.S. relies heavily on allies for counterterrorism information

 Most intelligence work focuses on gathering and analyzing information and presenting it to policymakers so they can make educated decisions.

Counterterrorism intelligence is different. It requires identifying and thwarting threats before they happen. Analysis and operations go together in preventing an attack or neutralizing a threat. The United States cannot do this by itself — this effort relies heavily on intelligence cooperation from other countries.

Intelligence cooperation on counterterrorism takes various forms. Simple cooperation involves the exchange of single pieces of intelligence, often regarding a common target such as the Islamic State.

There are also more complex forms of cooperation. For example, the United States has often bartered technical information gathered from satellites and other sources gleaned through technical means, for human source reporting that is more difficult to acquire. Sometimes, partners provide intelligence as part of a broader effort to maintain positive relations with the United States. Intelligence cooperation sometimes extends beyond the exchange of information to include the conduct of joint operations.

Despite vastly increasing the budget for the intelligence community in general and counterterrorism intelligence specifically after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States relies heavily on intelligence cooperation from other countries to fight terrorism. The information the United States collects via technical means can be frustratingly inconclusive and is often much more useful if paired with human intelligence. Partner nations are often better positioned to collect intelligence on their own soil and to act on that intelligence when necessary.

This is partly because of numbers. Even after going on a hiring binge, the United States still does not have enough intelligence officers to cover all the ground necessary. Partner intelligence services also often know the local language, including various dialects; share the ethnic and historical ties to intelligence targets; and understand the cultural terrain in ways that most U.S. intelligence officers never could.

Local intelligence services are often the first line of defense when it comes to disrupting attacks like the one the Islamic State may have been planning with laptop computers on aircraft. Intelligence relationships also help track foreign fighters, target key nodes in terrorist networks, and sever links between terrorist groups. Because not every terrorist is killed on the battlefield, partner services are also critical for interrogating and incarcerating suspected terrorists and determining whether U.S. investigators will have access to them.

Trump’s revelation could seriously damage cooperation with numerous countries

Most intelligence cooperation takes place bilaterally — between one country and another — rather than among a group of countries. Anytime a country shares intelligence, it risks exposing sources and methods. By limiting the exchange to one recipient, the intelligence service providing the information can limit this exposure and make calculated assessments about what to share.

This is why Trump’s decision to reveal classified intelligence to Russia could be so damaging in the long run. It was not the United States’ to provide. According to the rules of the intelligence game, to share this information, the United States would need permission from the country that collected it. Because the partner in question had not consented, the president violated a cardinal rule of intelligence cooperation.

The ally that provided the information reportedly warned U.S. officials repeatedly that it would cut off access to this type of intelligence if it were shared too widely. Other countries will have taken note, too. If the reporting is correct that Trump provided this information in an impulsive and boastful manner, the situation may be even worse. Leaks in an intelligence apparatus can be plugged. There is no recourse when it is the president, who has a right to every piece of data shared with the United States, who is the source of the problem.

Just like traditional alliances, some intelligence relationships are deeper and more durable than others. Sharing a common terrorist threat can help facilitate closer cooperation. However, if an intelligence relationship is characterized by mistrust, this can complicate cooperation even if both countries both give the same threat a high priority. Often, intelligence cooperation is insulated from the ups and downs of ordinary diplomatic relations, as long as both sides benefit from it. But trust is essential.

After Monday night, countries worldwide will be rethinking the merits of intelligence cooperation with the United States. The negative ramifications will be felt throughout the U.S. intelligence community, but counterterrorism is likely to be among the hardest hit.