This is no longer just political with me; this now involves the safety of this country and its people. I didn’t spend 5 years defending this country to see its safety poured down the drain. Sure I laughed as Trump made mistake after mistake, but this is no longer a laughing matter. If you want to continue to pretend for political reasons he isn’t a disgrace – hey, it’s your reputation. All I know is that sensible Republicans among my friends, people who genuinely care about their country, are starting to seriously question their previous support of this President.
By the way, you are wrong – Trump did admit he shared the information the Russians. This is his entire Twitter quote:
As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining…. 6:03 AM – 16 May 2017…to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism. 6:13 AM – 16 May 2017
So Trump admitted that he did share the information with the Russians which several very credible sources in our intelligence agencies have described as “Top Secret”. It was intelligence data shared with our intelligence services by one of our allies in the Mid East (probably Israel.) Trump’s only explanation – he had a legal right to share that information with anyone.
Yes, as Commander in Chief Trump has the legal right to declassify any intelligence data, but in this case is was stupid to do so. (Many of the controversial things he has done in the past have also been legal, but stupid.) If you are too clueless to understand why it was stupid on Trump’s part here is why:
1) Intelligence sharing is based on mutual trust between the nations involved. Trump has illustrated he cannot be trusted to not divulge sensitive, highly classified information. That will cause other nations to be wary of sharing sensitive information with us in the future.
2) Someone within ISIS is spying for a Mid Eastern country that is the source of the information and that person is risking his/her life. Then information was classified as Top Secret because if we revealed that information to anyone, they could figure out who supplied it and the source will be compromised, and possibility tortured and killed.
3) If ISIS were to learn what parts of their planning information has been compromised, they will change plans, which will further endanger our citizens and those of our allies.
4) The Russians are not our friends. (It seems sad that I have to explain this to a fellow American.) It is likely that the Russians will share that information with their allies, the Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies, which could well be infested with ISIS spies. Sharing the information with the Russians greatly increases the probability that the information has been compromised will get back to ISIS.
Lastly, hasn’t it started to bother you that almost every time that Trump and his team get into trouble it is because they are being too chummy with Putin and the Russians? We are talking about the Russians here! Normally most of you big Trump supporters consider the Russians bitter enemies, but here you are defending Trump’s very public bromance with Putin. Can’t you see you are turning yourself into a pretzel as you try to rationalize this weird thought process. Are you sure you can still trust yourself to be rational when it comes to defending Trump?
Sorry, for many, many reasons you are simply on the wrong side of this one. I hope you wise up soon.
Cajun 5/16/17