Monday, June 29, 2020

Are President Trump's Phone Calls A Security Risk?



CNN: From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials

(CNN)In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: It is well known that President Trump is someone that is almost always on the phone. Apparently the only time that he is not on a phone is when he is playing golf. But even though he is always on the phone, the details of his conversations are rarely made public. From the few phone calls of President Trump that have been leaked and/or released .... his conversation with Ukraine President Zelenskiy that led to him being impeached by the Congress, Philippine President Duterte, former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull .... I have found the phone calls to be straight forward and respectful. As for his conversations with Putin. I understand that they do talk regularly on a wide range of issues. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact. That is what world leaders do all the time. So why this CNN story right now? It is obvious that some former and current officials feel left out. But calling this a security risk .... that is a stretch. Trump is the President. He has the mandate to discuss national security issues with world leaders if he chooses to. I still remember President Trump's administration warning the Kremlin last year that US intelligence had learned of a terror plot in Saint Petersburg .... Putin thanks Trump for foiling New Year attacks (BBC). Many in Washington were not happy that certain US intelligence methods may have been compromised with this warning and subsequent phone calls between the two leaders. I say too bad. That is not a decision for them to make. Nor should it be.

9 comments:

  1. The revelations cast new doubt on the White House’s efforts to distance Trump from the Russian intelligence assessments. The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O’Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O’Brien denies he did so.

    On Monday night, O’Brien said that while the intelligence assessments regarding Russian bounties “have not been verified,” the administration has “been preparing should the situation warrant action.”

    The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump did not take any punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of Americans servicemembers at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, moving earlier this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sir--
    "many in Washington"--who and in what position and why is it "too bad." We are talking about national security and there are those who are experts in such things that you so readily dismiss. To leave that and all matters up to one man with no background in such matters is a direct road to a dictatorship and a mishandling of important matters

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, parrot was busy at 6:05, 8:36 & 8:52.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 8:52

    Do you now or have ever approved of the government hiding Brady evidence?

    It is a simple yes or no answer.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "One was the disclosure in the Inspector General’s report that FBI agent Joe Pientka, who later questioned Flynn, had been brought into a briefing in August 2016 to document his mannerisms. This deception was such a breach that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence now excludes the FBI from these types of briefings."

    So the CIA does not trust the FBI anymore.

    Suppose the CIA had not. Suppose in coming years the FBI director and cabal decide they want to drive the bus and not the CIA director et al. The FBI could be going into all these meetings with the CIA setting them up to be frog marched.

    I am so happy that weasels Comey, Rosenstein, Strzok, McCabe, Lisa Page (of Stroke me Peter fame) and others sowed mistrust and are preventing good intergovernemental working relationships.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Comey, Rosenstein, Strzok, McCabe, Lisa Page

    Throw in Wray.

    That is 6 known bad people out of ~ 35,000 FBI employees.

    That is one bad employee for every 6,000.

    But consider that they are near or at the top of the organizational food chain. Consider office politics and you must. People are political creatures. Consider that the rule of thumb that for every fighter in a guerilla insurgency there are 10 to 30 supporters.

    So may be there are one bad employee for every 600. It is looking a lot worse. Throw out the secretaries and support staff from the mix and it starts looking really ugly.

    Maybe sociologists and statisticians should look at the the number and infer what the true number might be. Chances are a journalism grad can't or won't.

    Fun Fact: Statisticians were able to predict German tank production in WW2 based on serial numbers of knocked German tanks, whereas spies in the German industrial heartland could not.

    So maybe statisticians could infer the level of corruption at the FBI based on the number of bad apples caught. Maybe the Russians could do it.

    Hari Seldon would.

    It is a matter of survival. These fucks are outside of their portfolio and out of their depth. The former they know; the latter they don't.




    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey what a informative post, Thanks for sharing this. Try to post this kind of useful content blog posts. so that everyone aware of the situation. I appreciated your work Thank you.
    Visit here:- Best background investigation company in New York

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey what a informative post, Thanks for sharing this. Try to post this kind of useful content blog posts. so that everyone aware of the situation. I appreciated your work Thank you.
    Visit here:- Best background investigation company in New York

    ReplyDelete