[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

thrawn82 wrote:
Al wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

And yet, they'll still overwhelmingly vote for him.

I was always confused by that attitude when I was in. Voting for people who would vote to send you to a war, any war, in a heartbeat but would instantly vote down anything that might spend money to help with service members dealing with anything from debilitating medical issues to even finding a job once they got out seemed counter intuitive to me.

I think the mindset is they arn't voting against helping you, you are hardworking and will be made an exception and helped. They are voting against helping those people who are lazy and don't deserve help.

Most of the Trump voters I know are absolutely fixated on the lazy people who are mooching off their tax dollars. Every time they complain about the wealthy, giving me a glimmer of hope that they might find their way out of darkness, they ALWAYS turn around and go back to berating poor people who they think are scamming the system, because they always know someone or have a relative who's doing that. Never mind all the poor people who are helped by these programs - they think more people are defrauding them than actually needing them, and they're willing to discard everything to stick it to those people and get lower taxes.

They keep voting against their own self-interest because they hate others more than they want to help themselves.

thrawn82 wrote:

They are voting against helping those people who are lazy and don't deserve help.

That, sadly, has been and continues to be the military leadership's attitude when it comes to PTSD and related issues. Given how long it's been that way, I'm not sure whether that seeped into conservatism in general or vise versa.

Mormech wrote:

Most of the Trump voters I know are absolutely fixated on the lazy people who are mooching off their tax dollars.

Yeah, I just had the quintessential argument with my Trumpkin uncle who was trying to tell me that most chronically homeless people "made bad choices in their lives." Never mind all the evidence that says that permanent housing is cheaper in the long run than shelters or how we abandon people with mental health issues and so on.

Mormech wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
Al wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

And yet, they'll still overwhelmingly vote for him.

I was always confused by that attitude when I was in. Voting for people who would vote to send you to a war, any war, in a heartbeat but would instantly vote down anything that might spend money to help with service members dealing with anything from debilitating medical issues to even finding a job once they got out seemed counter intuitive to me.

I think the mindset is they arn't voting against helping you, you are hardworking and will be made an exception and helped. They are voting against helping those people who are lazy and don't deserve help.

Most of the Trump voters I know are absolutely fixated on the lazy people who are mooching off their tax dollars. Every time they complain about the wealthy, giving me a glimmer of hope that they might find their way out of darkness, they ALWAYS turn around and go back to berating poor people who they think are scamming the system, because they always know someone or have a relative who's doing that. Never mind all the poor people who are helped by these programs - they think more people are defrauding them than actually needing them, and they're willing to discard everything to stick it to those people and get lower taxes.

They keep voting against their own self-interest because they hate others more than they want to help themselves.

It’s one of the largest examples of cognitive dissonance I’ve ever seen personally. When reality doesn’t fit your belief system, just double the f*ck down on those beliefs. Because there’s not normally some ‘immediate’ negative feedback from this in our society, it propagates rapidly and people are happy to entrench themselves in foxholes that have already been sighted in by rhetorical artillery, fighting someone that isn’t even their enemy and never realizing that who they should be concerned with are the people cheering them on from behind that endorse their willingness to man those holes.

PEW PEW!!!

Trump announces Space Command

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump announced Thursday the official establishment of the US military's Space Command.
"Those who wish to harm the United States, to seek to challenge us on the ultimate high ground of space, it's going to be a whole different ballgame," Trump said at a White House ceremony marking the command's establishment.
Space Command will become the 11th combatant command, joining the ranks of US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, and US Special Operations Command, which oversees Special Operations Forces. The command will initially consist of just 287 personnel and its final location has yet to be determined. Its responsibilities will be transferred primarily from US Strategic Command.
JC wrote:

PEW PEW!!!

Trump announces Space Command

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump announced Thursday the official establishment of the US military's Space Command.
"Those who wish to harm the United States, to seek to challenge us on the ultimate high ground of space, it's going to be a whole different ballgame," Trump said at a White House ceremony marking the command's establishment.
Space Command will become the 11th combatant command, joining the ranks of US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, and US Special Operations Command, which oversees Special Operations Forces. The command will initially consist of just 287 personnel and its final location has yet to be determined. Its responsibilities will be transferred primarily from US Strategic Command.

Uh, how about in space?

Trump’s Personal Assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, Steps Down

NYT wrote:

President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said.

Ms. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, N.J., during the president’s working vacation, according to one of the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House personnel issues.

The breach of trust meant immediate action: Ms. Westerhout, one of the people familiar with her departure said, was now considered a “separated employee” and would not be allowed to return to the White House on Friday.

I love how an unnamed source confirms that. Fire them too?

It actually is normal to dismiss staff of elected officials when they talk private details to the press and it gets out.

What's not normal is that someone would be in that position (working for the highest elected in the land) and make such a rookie mistake.

Stele wrote:

I love how an unnamed source confirms that. Fire them too?

It’s like Katamari. Just keep firing everyone until you get to Trump.

Top_Shelf wrote:

What's not normal is that someone would be in that position (working for the highest elected in the land) and make such a rookie mistake.

Only the best people!

A week ago...

Giuliani says he met with Ukrainian official to discuss Biden

CNN wrote:

Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that he had spoken with a Ukrainian official about Joe Biden's possible role in that government's dismissal of a prosecutor who investigated Biden's son.

The move shows the former New York mayor is making a renewed push for the country to investigate President Donald Trump's political enemies. Giuliani, who serves as Trump's personal attorney, has long lobbied Ukraine to investigate the former vice president's call in 2016 to remove the country's top prosecutor, who at one point had been investigating a Ukrainian natural gas company connected to Biden's son, Hunter.

Other Western governments also called for that prosecutor's dismissal, and no evidence has indicated Biden's move was inappropriate.

Ukraine's prosecutor general told Bloomberg in May he had no proof of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.

Today...

Trump seriously considering blocking $250M in military aid to Ukraine

CNN wrote:

President Donald Trump is seriously considering a plan to block $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, a move that would further ingratiate him with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has directed senior officials to review the aid package.

Trump's decision to order the review comes after the White House publicly lost a battle to slash foreign aid spending across the board. After scrapping the plan to slash $4 billion in foreign aid, Trump said his team would look to find cuts elsewhere in the aid budget.

"The President has made no secret when it comes to foreign assistance that US interests abroad should be prioritized and other foreign countries should also be paying their fair share," a senior administration official told CNN.

Specifically, Trump has directed Defense Secretary Mark Esper and national security adviser John Bolton to oversee the process, the senior administration official said.

The President has not yet made a final decision on whether to permanently block the funds, an administration official told CNN. The review process, however, has effectively paused disbursement of the funds, which are set to expire on September 30 if they are not used.

The Pentagon has already recommended to the White House that the hold on military assistance to Ukraine be lifted, an administration official and a US defense official told CNN Thursday.

Can't make this stuff up...

whispa wrote:

Can't make this stuff up...

... I am finally just out of words.

"Best wishes and good luck?" What, "thoughts and prayers" only are good for white people?

"among the myriad questions Trump's tweet raises is a basic one about the President's objective"

Well, nothing, beyond saying "LOL your rocket blew up"

whispa wrote:

Can't make this stuff up...

What idiot would send pictures to this man's phone? Especially potential classified material...

... but her emails?

JC wrote:
whispa wrote:

Can't make this stuff up...

What idiot would send pictures to this man's phone? Especially potential classified material...

It seems he took the pic with his phones camera.

NathanialG wrote:
JC wrote:
whispa wrote:

Can't make this stuff up...

What idiot would send pictures to this man's phone? Especially potential classified material...

It seems he took the pic with his phones camera.

That’s even worse!

Here's how I picture it went down.

Intelligence briefing. Trump is jovial. Starts off telling jokes and stories. The presenters force some nervous laughs. They've heard all these stories before. Trump becomes surly and bored as they try to push through the slideshow and dutifully communicate everything they're supposed to. It's disheartening, knowing that at best 5% of it is even registering in the President's head. He's not engaged, getting pissier by the moment. They speed through quickly, skipping over several points.

Finally they get to the slide of the blown up rocket. He sits up a little straighter. They've got his attention. Maybe they put that slide in there specifically knowing he'd like to see it. They spend a lot of time going over details like nearby blown up trucks. Someone cracks a lame joke about it. Trump smiles a bit, loosening up. Starts telling lame jokes of his own. Next thing they know he's standing up and taking a picture of it on his phone. Hearts sink a bit, but no one has the nerve to tell him not to. Then he mentions he's going to tweet it to everyone. "He wouldn't do that, would he? Of course he would", they think. "Hopefully, he'll get distracted and the pic will just sit forgotten on his phone forever. That's our best bet." He didn't forget.

gewy wrote:

Here's how I picture it went down.

Intelligence briefing. Trump is jovial. Starts off telling jokes and stories. The presenters force some nervous laughs. They've heard all these stories before. Trump becomes surly and bored as they try to push through the slideshow and dutifully communicate everything they're supposed to. It's disheartening, knowing that at best 5% of it is even registering in the President's head. He's not engaged, getting pissier by the moment. They speed through quickly, skipping over several points.

Finally they get to the slide of the blown up rocket. He sits up a little straighter. They've got his attention. Maybe they put that slide in there specifically knowing he'd like to see it. They spend a lot of time going over details like nearby blown up trucks. Someone cracks a lame joke about it. Trump smiles a bit, loosening up. Starts telling lame jokes of his own. Next thing they know he's standing up and taking a picture of it on his phone. Hearts sink a bit, but no one has the nerve to tell him not to. Then he mentions he's going to tweet it to everyone. "He wouldn't do that, would he? Of course he would", they think. "Hopefully, he'll get distracted and the pic will just sit forgotten on his phone forever. That's our best bet." He didn't forget.

He had to prove that he is like his very good and reliable friend, Bibi.

The Israeli military has decided taunting Iran through social media and tough guy political talk is a very smart and good decision.

gewy wrote:

Here's how I picture it went down.

Intelligence briefing. Trump is jovial. Starts off telling jokes and stories. The presenters force some nervous laughs. They've heard all these stories before. Trump becomes surly and bored as they try to push through the slideshow and dutifully communicate everything they're supposed to. It's disheartening, knowing that at best 5% of it is even registering in the President's head. He's not engaged, getting pissier by the moment. They speed through quickly, skipping over several points.

Finally they get to the slide of the blown up rocket. He sits up a little straighter. They've got his attention. Maybe they put that slide in there specifically knowing he'd like to see it. They spend a lot of time going over details like nearby blown up trucks. Someone cracks a lame joke about it. Trump smiles a bit, loosening up. Starts telling lame jokes of his own. Next thing they know he's standing up and taking a picture of it on his phone. Hearts sink a bit, but no one has the nerve to tell him not to. Then he mentions he's going to tweet it to everyone. "He wouldn't do that, would he? Of course he would", they think. "Hopefully, he'll get distracted and the pic will just sit forgotten on his phone forever. That's our best bet." He didn't forget.

Unfortunately, as President he has the authority to declassify it even if it was classified. There are procedures in place that normally get used when the President wants to declassify something, but they, like many other things Trump's ignored, are merely formalities, not laws.

What makes anyone think he asked permission to do it? Dude is a walking id.

Top_Shelf wrote:

What makes anyone think he asked permission to do it? Dude is a walking id.

He definitely did not, but as Stengah said, he doesn't actually need to. The act of being president publishing the photo is sufficient to declassify it.

Turns out that when they wrote the Constitution they assumed that the president would be a rational person with the best interests of the country in mind. And that the rest of the country would do something about it otherwise.

Gremlin wrote:

Turns out that when they wrote the Constitution they assumed that the president would be a rational person with the best interests of the country in mind. And that the rest of the country would do something about it otherwise.

What a bunch of idiots.

thrawn82 wrote:

He definitely did not, but as Stengah said, he doesn't actually need to. The act of being president publishing the photo is sufficient to declassify it.

He likes to talk about his absolute right to do this or that, and sometimes he's even right. Still he comes across like a kid on a car trip who's told to stay on their half of the back seat so stacks up all their stuff exactly on the line just because they can.

This was a good read I saw secondhand on Facebook:
(spoilered for length, but here's the money quote)

If you talk to people who have had the responsibility of protecting classified material and ask them, "what would you do if someone in a classified briefing broke out a cell phone and started taking pictures of the slides?", the answer would very possibly involve a body tackle and holding the person on the ground until security arrived. The cell phone would never leave the briefing facility. The person's career would immediately end. You may think I'm kidding: I am not.
Spoiler:

[Share-OK.]

Gather round, kids.

Mr. Trump tweeted out a high-resolution image of an Iranian missile test. For a good three or four minutes I was literally reduced to whimpering. A former Air Force Office of Special Investigations friend told me in lieu of drinking heavily he was curled up in a fetal position on the couch. Another friend who served in an allied intelligence service -- well, we'll get into his feelings in a bit: let's just say they're not positive. There seems to be a lot of people losing their heads over this. Brett Johnson wants to know why.

Let me start by saying that it's a completely reasonable question. Anybody who wants to mock him for asking why needs to do it somewhere other than here. The problem with this completely reasonable question is that wow, really, where to begin, there is so much terrible here to choose from.

Let's start with the image itself. It was released via tweet and the President's personal account, which is already troubling. The President's account is, to put it lightly, uncensored. It does not get vetted through official channels. It is the President's stream-of-consciousness outlet to the world. This already should give people concern in the, "wait, was this image vetted by the intelligence community?" sense.

In fact, there is evidence it was not.

The next thing you'll notice about the image is there's a bright spot in the center. Thanks to a gloriously misspent life, I can tell you that's probably a cellphone camera flash off a projection screen. (Probably. If the image were higher-resolution I might be able to tell you if the cellphone model is consistent with the President's cellphone model.) This is not a normal way of getting copies of classified material. If you talk to people who have had the responsibility of protecting classified material and ask them, "what would you do if someone in a classified briefing broke out a cell phone and started taking pictures of the slides?", the answer would very possibly involve a body tackle and holding the person on the ground until security arrived. The cell phone would never leave the briefing facility. The person's career would immediately end. You may think I'm kidding: I am not.

Generally speaking, the only time someone is alone in a briefing room with a classified slide deck is when they're the person delivering the presentation and they're setting up for it. The person(s) delivering this briefing didn't need to take a photo of it: they already have the images. That photograph was taken by a briefing attendee, using a cellphone camera, with flash. There is no way other people in the room did not know what was going on. Whoever was in the room knew something was wrong, and they were unable to prevent it from happening.

Put it together and what you get is a pretty good circumstantial case that Mr. Trump took his cell phone into a classified briefing room and, in the middle of the presentation, took a flash photograph of a slide he liked. Whoever was in the room likely tried to persuade him not to, likely explained the massive violations of White House policy and guidelines for handling classified information, and was unable to persuade Mr. Trump to simply _not take a photograph of a classified briefing._

I can't believe I'm typing those words.

They couldn't persuade him to leave his cell phone at the door. They couldn't persuade him not take a photograph of a classified briefing.

The next question is whether what he released was national security information. One person commented -- quite foolishly -- that "obviously" the intelligence community signed off on the release. I'm unaware of any evidence for that. I see what looks like it could have been a classification marking in the upper left hand corner, which is now obscured by a blackout bar. But that's not how documents are declassified. When documents are declassified it's either because enough time has passed for them to be automatically declassified, or because an appropriate authority has declassified them. In the former case, you'll see markings like "Classified until" and a date. In the latter case you'll see markings like, "Declassified on [date], by [person]". We don't see those markings here. We know it's declassified, because Mr. Trump assures us it's declassified. But it sure wasn't declassified through the normal process.

So far here's what we have strong circumstantial evidence to believe: that Mr. Trump took his cell phone into a classified briefing, that he took a photograph of a slide, he bypassed normal declassification channels, and posted it to Twitter.

So that's the first problem, Brett. His defenders will claim nothing he did was illegal, and that's true: the President stands superior to all policies regarding classified materials. He has unlimited discretion to violate those policies as he wishes. But with that power must come accountability, in the form of Congressional hearings for the *abuse* of that power.

So let's see if his use of power was responsible. Let's start by looking at our international partners.

The intelligence community has an analogue to NATO. It's called the Five Eyes, and is as close as you'll find to a league of gentlemen among the heartless bastards of the intelligence community. The Five Eyes are the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The United States is the big bruiser of the Five Eyes, with capabilities the others can't match -- but at the same time, never underestimate the ability of these other nations to get human assets in interesting places because they're *not* Americans. A few years ago when there was an Al Qaeda plot to pack bombs in printer toner cartridges and load them onto airlines, we managed to foil those murderous intentions in large part due to coordination with and support from the United Kingdom. We give a lot to the Five Eyes. We also get an awful lot back. It is fair trade in the best sense of the word: everybody is better off as a result of the information sharing among the Five Eyes.

Right now the United Kingdom is having a massive dust-up with Iran. Iran has been seizing British ships on the high seas. The British Navy has about two dozen warships. They're superb warships with superb crews, but they only have about two dozen. They cannot be everywhere in the world they need to be, and they are massively dependent on good intelligence to let them know where they need to be. The United States has all kinds of surveillance assets operating in the Middle East right now: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. And I will bet my bottom dollar that we are giving our friends in Great Britain priority access to Iranian surveillance, in order to help them find their seized ships, keep track of Iranian Navy operations, and more.

Imagine you're a Secret Intelligence Service (what was formerly called "MI6") analyst who just turned on the BBC.

The American President has just told Iran just how good our surveillance is. And that's going to affect the calculus for how Great Britain protects *its* national interests, because now the Iranians know what level of coverage the British are likely getting.

Mr. Trump didn't just reveal *our* capabilities when he tweeted that improperly-taken, improperly-declassified picture.

He revealed *the Five Eyes' capabilities*.

I promise you, the nations of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand are all having the screaming heebie-jeebies over this.

But wait, it gets worse.

This isn't the first time the United States has jeopardized the safety of our allies. Do you remember two years ago when some murderous lunatic detonated a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester? Their Security Service ("MI5") immediately shared with us highly confidential photographs of the crime scene. The FBI gave the Security Service assurances that we would protect it. We had to, because if those photographs were to be leaked it would have jeopardized Great Britain's ability to prosecute the perpetrator in court. (UK law is pretty strict about pre-trial publicity: unnecessary public disclosure of evidence creates massive problems for the Crown Prosecutorial Service.)

And yet somehow those photographs appeared in the _New York Times_. Our government jeopardized the prosecution of terrorism suspects, and why? Because someone in the White House (we do not know it was Mr. Trump) could not be bothered to properly care for confidential documents shared by an ally.

Two years ago we violated the UK's ability to prosecute a terrorist. Today Mr. Trump has announced to the world exactly how good a view on the world the UK is getting from us.

I am terrified, Brett -- I am genuinely terrified -- that the next time the Brits discover an Al Qaeda plot to blow up an airliner they'll say, "we should wait, let's not share this with the Americans just yet unless it's absolutely necessary, you know how their President tweets things."

_And that will get Americans killed._

Some people will say, "wow, Rob cares an awful lot about allied intelligence capabilities," as if I somehow shouldn't care about them. Yes, I care about our connections with allied intelligence agencies, _because it keeps Americans alive._ These intelligence sharing agreements _keep Americans alive_ and Mr. Trump is jeopardizing them.

I don't know what kind of storm is brewing within the Five Eyes over this. I couldn't begin to imagine. But there is absolutely no reason to think this was announced to our partners in advance, or that we asked their opinion on whether publishing this would jeopardize their national security interests, or anything else.

This tweet will get Americans killed.

And let's not even get into Australia. Australia's living in a bad neighborhood. You've got an expansionist China, a North Korea that's throwing rockets off every which way, there's ... good grief. Now all of Australia's adversaries are studying the Iranian missile site and thinking, "mmhmm, so _that's_ the quality of intelligence Canberra is receiving."

Brett, you said that you thought Iran already knew our capabilities. Maybe, maybe not. But do you think China knew them? China and North Korea? China and North Korea and Cuba? China and North Korea and Cuba and Syria? China and North Korean and Cuba and Syria and Russia? China and North Korea and Cuba and Syria and Russia and every other place that thinks the West needs to be taught a lesson?

Mr. Trump gave valuable information about our surveillance capabilities to _all of them._

_At once._

Words fail me.

Brett, this is bad. This is really, really bad. And even with as many words as I've written here, I've only scratched the surface of why it's bad.

Why is it bad?

Because it shows that Mr. Trump cannot be persuaded to follow standard policies on the handling of national security information.

Because it shows that he's not listening to his advisors who shriek in horror when he breaks out a cell phone in a briefing.

Because it shows that he hasn't learned from his administration's past mistakes with releasing confidential photographs belonging to Her Majesty's government.

Because it shows that he doesn't think.

Because every time he does this he's inflicting a terrible wound on the international cooperation that keeps Americans safe.

Because it shows he doesn't know or care how it's going to impact our allies.

Because he's going to get Americans killed.

That's why it's bad.

That's why when I saw this photograph I wanted to drink heavily.

Now, if you'll pardon me, my Scotch awaits.

And let's not forget that Trump took that picture with a phone that he doesn't regularly get checked by security personnel or swapped out because it's "too inconvenient" for him. And that back in 2018 when he had adult wranglers he went as long as five months without having his Twitter phone checked.

China and North Korea could learn a lot from him tweeting that photo, but I have to imagine that foreign intelligence service could learn a lot more from Trump's bringing a compromised phone into classified briefings.

With the montages of the President never having heard of a category 5 storm - despite him having announced it multiple times during his term, I think I know where his brain is going.

One of the plot points of the movie Twister is that none of them have seen an F5 tornado.

I'm pretty sure that "fact" is the thing stuck in his head.