Today’s crazy scary thing from the unspooling catastrophe of the Trump Administration. A reader writes:
From the Observer, which ironically is owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
The author, who has significant background, but apparently was let go by the National War College because of a sexual scandal, was taken very seriously during the campaign by conservatives and the National Review when he wrote at great length about the Clinton e-mails. They may feel very differently about this article.
Here’s the bit that was new to me:
A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.
Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears.
What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.
None of this has happened in Washington before. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn’t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago.
For the love of God *stop* responding to every critique of this disastrously dangerous man with with “But Hillary!” or some lame excuse about something Obama did. Stop living in 11/8/16. The election is over. Hillary lost. Obama is gone. And right now we have a President the intelligence community regards as a Russian mole to whom they will not reveal information a President needs in order to do his job. Stop trying to rationalize your vote and explain that you meant well and all the rest of it.
Good. Great. You meant well. I believe you. I think you are a good person who was trying to prevent evil.
Keep trying to do that. Here’s reality: The President we have now is a menace to national security and has to go. Now. Live in the present and forget your fear of being judged for your vote. Live in the present and face the fact that the President is an incompetent con man whom the Intelligence community is afraid to fully inform. Live in the present and face the fact that he is a pathological liar and crazy. Speak. Open your mouth. Demand that he be removed from office. When the Intel community is now treating him like a Russian mole, that is reason to start talking about High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Indeed, it is reason to start talking about Treason.
Trump. Must. Go.