this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
612 points (97.2% liked)

politics

19089 readers
4041 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When Trump took office, he was unable to answer a question of what the US nuclear triad consists of. Basically, its land, sea, and air capabilities for strategic attack with nuclear weapons. He literally did not know that.

Based on everything we’ve heard about how the man operates, he probably received a standard presidential briefing on readiness. However, it is also my understanding that Jared Kushner, despite being denied a security clearance multiple times for failing background checks and his ties to foreign government officials, asked for and received briefings on classified information he had no reason for knowing. The problem is that “need to know” goes out the window when it’s the president’s son in law.

I suspect everyone involved with the administration knew about Trump and his family, but were also limited to what they could legally do. Maybe they made sure he didn’t know anything you couldn’t get from Jane’s or Aviation Week, but he also could have gotten highly classified briefings on, eg, our ability to crack in Syria or Iran using sea-based systems.

Here’s where I’m coming from:

  1. Trump actively leaked classified information to foreign actors and non-cleared persons. This is not contested.
  2. On the occasions we know about, he seemed to do so to make himself seem important. I cannot imagine the psychology of a person who is the president of the United States and still feels like his ego needs a boost by telling some ambassador about US military or intelligence secrets.
  3. We don’t yet know if he also did so on the basis of payment, but I strongly suspect that Kushner was also actively soliciting information and the Trump family, including Kushner, received billions of dollars and other considerations from foreign governments.
  4. Trump and his inner circle were the source of a huge number of the leaks coming out of the White House as palace intrigue drove them to make plays for public perception. They also tended to deal with foreign governments the same way (eg, “I will do X but I’m going to want a favor…”)

I’m pretty far from being a hawk at this point in my lifetime, but even I think that Trump should be jailed and have his communications monitored for the rest of his life, and the same needs to be on the table for other members of his closest circles, including family members. The Constitution tried to take things like selfishness into account in creating the balances of power that they used, but they had no idea that someone could be elected President and have the full support of party members in both chambers of Congress as well as the politicized judiciary even if they were actively engaged in selling national security intelligence to hostile countries. Between their conception of the role of noblesse oblige on the part of people rich enough to get elected, and the idea that people would defend their role as congressional representatives over their personal/party based goals, they were wrong.