It’s in his Twitter feed. Did you not see that?
It has not been denied that Trump revealed classified information.
Not only to the Russian Ambassador and Foreign Minister but to the Russian press.
No. It is and has always been “Trump did not improperly disclose confidential information”. In spite of “anonymous sources”.
Administration officials were blindsided by the president’s messages early [insert date] and scrambled to reconcile the gap between them and [insert name]'s comments.
I have just done the media’s job for the next 4 years.
McMaster, Powell, and Tillerson have provided it.
Here is McMasters statement.
Notice that “confidential information” is not part of the statement. It’s very specific what was not discussed.
Geez Louise, people, why are you engaging with Okie? It’s the same ol’ blahblahblah. Wastes screen space.
Anyhoo, it occurs to me that with the Ruskies Trump pulled the classic [del]adolescent[/del] middle-school move when you want someone you idolize to be your friend. First, you invite them to your secret clubhouse and exclude your regular, boring, unimportant friends. Then you impress your hero by telling him how important you are. Trump started out with, “I have great intel, the BEST intel, I know shit* and since you are my special friend, I’m going to show you just HOW important I am.” Then you seal the deal by telling them a BIG(LY) secret, something they REALLY want to know, and you’re the only person who can tell them. “I’m going to tell you this thing that even most people in the administration don’t know! Cool, eh? I’ll bet you’ll like me now, amirite?”
- But, sadly, not from Shinola.
The odd thing is that the information is not only on a need to know basis, but also on a permitted to know by the information provider basis. That Trump has no idea why such a thing would be the case is yet another data point proving his unfitness for office.
Trumpy Wumpy contradicted them with his morning tweets.
“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do…”
Mango Mussolini is explaining WHY he shared info with Russia. McMaster is lying.
Yeah, that’s the takeaway from this. Everyone knows Trump is a liar. Now he’s proven that McMaster is a liar too.
When he was nominated, part of his story was that he overcame attempts at hindering his advancement through the ranks due to his outspokenness.
WTF happened?
And I think this is the biggest clue that people need to get -
a) Trump and his adminstration - from the outset of the campaign thru to today has claimed that the media is the ones lieing. This keeps everyone questioning (or simply not believing) anything that is said - unless it comes thru Facebook (re: the latest ‘WALL is being built crap’, etc)
b) Trump and his administration - can’t manage to keep a story straight - so we cant tell if they are lieing or not
c) Trump seems to revel in keeping everything in an uproar - cause it makes things feel ‘busy’ and ‘him in control’.
This is not the way you run a country - this is the way you destroy one.
For all of the bitterness of past elections - the bitterness generally ended after election - not this time.
so this morning you just added the word “improperly” to your argument. Last night, he didn’t disclose any information. Today, he didn’t “improperly” disclose any information.
Your only thin little thread now is “If the president does it, it’s not illegal”. You’d defend Trump if he gave the nuclear codes to the Russians, and ordered the army to stand down while the invasion took place; it wouldn’t be illegal.
That’s a lie. Can you cite any post of mine that claimed that he “didn’t disclose any information”?
My claim (still valid) is that WaPo story is fake. WaPo story is about Trump improperly disclosing classified information.
There’s two, liar.
Depends on how you define “improper”
We would not say that he illegally disclosed information, because as has been said, we know that the president can declassify information whenever he wants to.
Improper, however, does not mean illegal. It means that he did not go through normal channels. It means that he did not advise those who may be compromised by the leak ahead of time. It means that he did not get advice from his advisors on what information to share in what way. And most importantly , it means that he did not ask for permission from the foreign intelligence agency that provided that intel to the US.
The way he went about sharing this intel put assets in place at risk, possible operations in jeopardy, and decreases the willingness of other countries’ intelligence agencies to share intel with us.
If you want to continue to argue that that is the proper way to go about disclosing intel to the russians, go ahead, but I don’t think that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Meddling is paying you enough for all the twisting that they are making you do these days.
How about the fact that McMaster just had a presser where he verified that the WaPo story was real, it was just the “premise” that was incorrect? 17 minutes and not one denial.
Otoh, he did let us know:
Trump did it on the spur of the moment.
Trump likely did not know source of info.
Could, would not deny:
Trump gave them classified info
Trump named the city where the intel came from
Wow. Okay, that says it all (not that we had any doubt).
As usual, the administration is saying that the story is not the problem; the problem is those who leaked the story. What’s not usual is that McMaster is the one saying to go after the leaks.
That depends on who’s talking points you use, Trumps, or the people that speak for him. It’s like flipping a coin.