politics

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.