Thread by @robert_spalding

🧵1/ People keep asking if I support President Trump, so I thought I would do a thread. For me the answer is complicated and based on personal experience.

In 2017 I was the Senior Defense Official and Defense Attache in Beijing. It’s a complicated job since you have 5 bosses - Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Director of Defense Intelligence Agency, Commander of INDOPACOM and the Ambassador.

I arrived in China with a good idea of what the CCP was and immediately found myself in a crisis. 1 week after arriving the PLA stole an unmanned underwater drone in the near the Philippine coast and right in front of the US warship sent to retrieve it.

It was my job to negotiate the return of the vehicle, and I did so successfully.

I was also busy thinking about how we could develop a strategy to protect our country from the malign political influence of the CCP.

Soon after I received a call from the White House looking for help in the NSC. I recommended a few good candidates, but also threw my hat in the ring in case they didn’t work out.

Shortly thereafter I was asked to interview. It was clear during my interview I had far more knowledge of CCP strategy than anyone there, so was hired to help develop our strategy to protect the country.

I left China in April 2017 after telling Liu He’s assistant this was China’s last chance to change. I knew they wouldn’t, but couldn’t help but inform them of the consequences of their malign behavior.

I arrived to a war zone. The Trump administration was full of self serving people all trying to advance on the backs of their peers.

I ignored that and went to work helping my colleagues understand the danger we faced. I was successful in informing and engaging my colleagues and ultimately the resulting strategy was widely praised.

That said, it was clear the bureaucracy did not feel the CCP was a threat. This meant execution of the strategy was not going to be as desired, but rather continuously undermined by the bureaucracy.

Knowing I had a short time to effect change I thought about what I could do to positively impact our future.

I decided to focus on our digital infrastructure knowing it was vulnerable to sabotage and manipulation.

I brought in experts and tried to understand what was happening. Over several months I learned enough to write an info paper and create a presentation to inform senior leaders.

What happened afterwards is still a mystery to me. Evidently someone from the telecom industry complained to the White House.

From what I’ve been able to gather, someone at the NSC leaked the paper. I know this because Jonathan Swan was the reporter who received the paper. He was the one who was receiving leaks from the White House at the time.

He wrote an article you can still find it online here: axios.com/2018/01/28/tru…

I called Swan and confronted him on the phone. He told me that whoever sent this paper to him said I was leaving the White House. At the time, only the NSC leadership knew that. That meant the White House had leaked the paper to make it look like I was doing something wrong.

The lesson I learned about DC stays with me to this day.

I wasn’t the only one done dirty by the Trump White House. I watched as Rich Higgins was marched out in 2017.

Despite everything that happened I wouldn’t change a thing. Our country is under threat both from Chinese influence and internal corruption.

There is much more to the story, so please leave me alone about my political beliefs. They have nothing to do with my crusade against the CCP. The only thing that matters to me is the constitution and our republic. I have suffered and will continue to suffer to support and defend… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

I meant my political leanings have everything to do with my crusade against the CCP.