I remember reading an article a lifetime ago, it seems now, a couple days after Trump’s inauguration in 2017. It mentioned State Department staffers, like usual, preparing a bundle of briefings right after the election so the incoming team would be up to speed on the various hot spots and concerns when it took over.
Nobody showed up to get the information.
Let that sink in for a moment. Nobody in Trump’s administration was competent enough or cared enough – take your pick – to find out what was going on at the fucking State Department so they could hit the ground running when they came in. I could kind of understand that for some of the other cabinets they were planning on emasculating or eliminating all together like Energy or Education but even the chimps with hammers should be able to figure out the State Department is kind of important.
You may be interested in this article, in which Michael Morell, an experienced intelligence analyst, who was a former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, was interviewed about this very topic.
While reading these posts about nominees receiving intelligence briefings, a hilarious image popped in my head of trump receiving briefings about active threats to the United states. And himself and his criminal cohorts being at the top of the list.
I can just imagine it…
Trump while looking at an intelligence briefing that’s a page and a half “Will somebody read this to me. it’s got too many big words in it!”
Trump’s team never showed for the initial briefings at the Energy Department either. Then on arrival, they demanded a list of staff working on climate change. Then proceed to bury numerous studies.
search:energy department brief to trump staffers
Rick Perry who kept on some senior staffers from previous administrations and this guy were totally unqualified.
(I give Perry some credit for understanding he didn’t know what the Energy Department even did when he was railing against it [though he couldn’t remember the name during the Republicant debates]).
The sad fact is that some high proportion of those Trump would put into power genuinely believe that God Will Do as God Wills—so why bother mucking about with foreign policy? It’s not our place, as mere humans, to do so! Let God handle it.
This sounds like another facet of the white christian nationalism that the orange a****** has courted and deliberately threaded throughout his base.
(I almost said “threaded itself” but I realize that wasn’t accurate. Trump has deliberately courted these people and view them as his closest supporters. And oh yeah let’s never miss an opportunity to say f*** you to Stephen Miller who is the one probably most responsible for this)
Agreed. People of that type are fairly easy to manipulate–just convince them that any would-be dictator who gave them their jobs is Chosen By God.
Easy-to-manipulate people are perfect to have in place, whether your goal is financial gain (they ignore corruption as irrelevant to God’s Plan), the personal exercise of power (whee!!), or both.
Yes, but if they had, wouldn’t it be helpful if at some point they revealed to the public that they’d exposed Trump as a major security leak? Like, for instance, when he’s about to become his party’s official nominee for President?
Of course I understand that it’s useful to leave a leak in place if you know he’s a leak. But wouldn’t it be even more useful to not let the leak become President again?
(And of course I also understand that if the CIA or NSA were to make such a formal announcement, no matter how much evidence they presented a good chunk of voters would dismiss it as a Biden-led partisan witchhunt. But those aren’t the voters we care about.)
I’d be very surprised if they’d given him false information when he was president, as you really, really want the president to have accurate information when they make decisions, even if it’s an idiot like Trump.
But Trump the Candidate? Screw that guy, let’s find out if he’s leaking.
So we probably don’t have evidence of him leaking yet, but we may soon.
As above, they aren’t going to give candidates specific, actionable information but rather general high level information, delivered verbally.
And if he really is leaking that sort of information to Russia, it’s going to be hard to point it out exactly - it’s most likely the sort of stuff they probably already suspect in broad strokes. And if they want specific details, well, Trump is hardly known for his ability to repeat factual data verbatim or for a firm grasp on objective reality. They’d have to filter anything they got from him anyway and most of what he attempted to repeat would likely be garbage.
The idea that such verbal, high level briefings could be used to conclusively suss him out as a leak borders on fantasy. That is, unless he is specifically fed material in an attempt to entrap him, but that has its own issues, especially if the briefings are delivered verbally.
If and when he would have access to actual physical intelligence information, i.e. winning the election, especially information that could be passed on or exposed to foreign nations, well this whole thread is already about his cavalier attitude towards the secure handling and storage of such data.
But that sort of entrapment has loads of issues, not least of which is if I were a Russian intelligence officer, I would have issues trusting it, much less using it. Why would a no longer sitting President, albeit a candidate, get that sort of thing? And why should it be trusted when it was obtained in such a fashion?
It assumes, contrary to everything we know, that the Russians are basically the Keystone Cops and will be unknowing and unwilling stooges to a scheme so blatantly obvious as to call their fundamental intelligence and capability into question.
Let’s please take the discussion regarding entrapment and daily briefings to a different thread. This one is for the narrow purpose of discussing the pending charges against Trump for retaining classified documents. Thanks.
The hearing will focus on “Trump’s motion to dismiss classified docs counts 1-32 on unconstitutional vagueness claims and Trump+Nauta motion to dismiss superseding indictment on the Presidential Records Act,” …
Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday rejected Trump’s claim that he was allowed to deem government records as personal under the Presidential Records Act. …
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Sunday questioned why Cannon selected the Presidential Records Act motion as well as another on the constitutional vagueness of the first 32 counts in the indictment out of the seven motions Trump’s team submitted.
“Why did she choose those?” Rubin questioned. "One possibility is she’s looking to toss the case, and she’s looking to toss it on something other than constitutional immunity grounds, because there is a fear that if the Supreme Court were to uphold, for example, the DC Circuit, she can’t go against that. She’ll be overturned.
“So, she’s looking for, potentially, another reason to throw out the case,” Rubin continued. "The Presidential Records Act argument is entirely frivolous. …
Given that the PRA does not apply to stealing classified documents, refusing to surrender them, and obstructing justice, how can Cannon possibly dismiss the case? What if she does? Does Smith have any recourse? Would such a blatant move demonstrating her loyalty to her leader instead of the Constitution be grounds for her impeachment or dismissal? If so, could Smith’s case be reinstated?
