President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
.. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
.. describing details of an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft... officials expressed concern about Trump’s handling of sensitive information as well as his grasp of the potential consequences... “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... Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,”.. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat... Moscow would be keenly interested in identifying that source and perhaps disrupting it... But the two nations have competing agendas in Syria, where Moscow has deployed military assets and personnel to support President Bashar al-Assad... given the clues Trump provided, “I don’t think that it would be that hard [for Russian spy services] to figure this out.”.. At a more fundamental level, the information wasn’t the United States’ to provide to others... Senior White House officials appeared to recognize quickly that Trump had overstepped and moved to contain the potential fallout... the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders, but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points — and often ignores those.
Trump Offers No Apology for Claim on British Spying
Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.
.. “We said nothing,” Mr. Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. “All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it.” He added: “You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”
.. Shortly afterward, Fox backed off the claim made by its commentator, Andrew Napolitano. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” the anchor Shepard Smith said on air. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.”
.. “Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling truth, I think President Obama is owed an apology,” Mr. Cole told reporters. “If he didn’t do it, we shouldn’t be reckless in accusations that he did.”
.. “The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated,” Susan E. Rice, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, wrote on Twitter. “And from the PODIUM.”
.. Mr. Spicer tried to turn the tables on those statements during his briefing on Thursday by reading from a sheaf of news accounts that he suggested backed up the president. Most of the news accounts, however, did not verify the president’s assertion
.. But it has never reported that Mr. Obama authorized the surveillance, nor that Mr. Trump himself was monitored.
.. Mr. Spicer read from comments made by Mr. Napolitano on Fox this week. “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command,” Mr. Spicer read. “He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ.”
.. GCHQ was the first agency to warn the United States government, including the National Security Agency, that Russia was hacking Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign.
Insiders: Hillary should pick Tim Kaine for VP
One New Hampshire Democrat — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously — said Kaine “reinforces [Clinton’s] theme of competence running against an unprepared reckless opponent.”
.. And the Pence/Kaine exchange on Medicaid expansion and Obamacare will be priceless.”
.. Like Trump, she needs someone low key,” added an Iowa Democrat. “In her case, however, it’s because she just isn’t very exciting or a good campaigner and wouldn’t want a VP choice to steal the spotlight. Kaine fills that bill.
.. Iowa is the closest of the toss-ups right now, and choosing a beloved native son would be a significant blow to Trump’s efforts here.”
.. “Pence is as restrained, conventional, and palatable as his haircut,” added an Ohio Republican, who called the Indiana governor a “good counterweight to Trump’s undisciplined, unpredictable, and odd political coiffure.”
.. “Truthfully, this gets Pence out of a losing situation, so the [Republican Governors Association] is the biggest beneficiary,” the insider said.
Donald Trump’s most enduring — and unbefitting — trait
I’ve been covering Donald Trump off and on for more than 25 years, and what has always struck me is his lack of impulse control. It was his biggest problem when I first started dealing with him in the 1980s, and it’s his biggest problem now.
.. He ended up presiding over six — count ’em, six — bankruptcies because he kept making business decisions with his gut rather than with his brain.
.. Whether we’re talking about the Bay of Pigs (when John F. Kennedy resisted the hawkish instincts of his advisers who wanted to escalate) or the bugging of Democratic headquarters (which Richard Nixon could not resist) or the invasion of Iraq (need I say more?), presidents are bombarded with chances to overreact, and their overreactions can have catastrophic consequences for our country and the world.
.. Lack of impulse control has enormously benefited his presidential campaign. It distinguished him among the
17 initial Republican candidates, allowed him to dominate cable TV news and got him massive coverage in other media as well... “The Apprentice” was a pivotal event for Trump. It made him into a truly national figure, and he says the show paid him more than $200 million during its run.
.. The crazier Trump acted on “The Apprentice,” the more he carried on and humiliated people and declared “you’re fired,” the better TV it was. So whatever instincts he might have had to develop self-control were vitiated by “The Apprentice.”
.. But there’s a downside — a huge one — to his behavior, and it’s starting to become apparent now. He’s incredibly reckless. He seems to sometimes license his name to questionable enterprises, without doing much (if any) research into them. He makes enemies he doesn’t have to make because he baits people and institutions that don’t bow down to him, and he reacts badly when organizations such as The Post (which he has banned from his campaign events) challenge him by asking perfectly reasonable questions.
.. I wonder how many middle and lower-middle types had no idea about what Trump U was up to until recently and didn’t know how Trump has stiffed all sorts of contractors over the years, resulting in lots of blue-collar workers losing their jobs. I wonder whether this knowledge will erode the faith of some Trump fans.
.. Section 469 forbids taxpayers from using these losses to offset other income unless more than half their business activities (at least 750 hours a year) involve developing or managing real estate. Not licensing their name to golf courses or making speeches or being on TV reality shows.
We ought to see if Trump has used Section 469 to shelter income in past years. And especially last year, when he was running for president.
.. Hussein amazingly managed to remain in power despite losing the 1991 Gulf War to the United States and its allies, who threw him out of Kuwait and inflicted immense losses on his military. It looked like Hussein was absolutely finished. But he emerged from the Gulf War in control of Iraq, managed to slaughter his internal opponents and ended up presiding over a country that had the world’s fourth-largest army.