David Rothkopf Profile picture
Aug 27, 2022 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Trump has always had a deeply troubling relationship with the US intelligence community. At his initial briefings as president, he was uninterested in key revelations and instead used the meeting to press officials for a public denunciation of the Steele dossier.
Days later, immediately after taking office, he gave a highly political speech at CIA headquarters that, in the view of former DNI Gen. James Clapper and many others, "desecrated" the memorial to former CIA employees.
He regularly discounted Intelligence Community views, particularly on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 elections and the threat they posed to future election security. He revealed classified information to Russian officials in the Oval Office.
He released classified information via the Internet. He insisted people including his family be given security clearances when it was urged by professionals that not happen. He publicly threw the US IC under the bus during his Helsinki press conference after his mtg w/Putin.
He forced out senior intelligence officials who he felt were insufficiently loyal to him and replaced them with unqualified political hacks he felt he could manipulate and use to protect him from IC revelations that he saw as threatening.
He used the classification process to keep politically damaging information (like notes of the Ukraine blackmail phonemail) from the public view. And as we now know, he stole and improperly handled massive number of highly classified documents.
We still don't know how many. We still don't know why. We just know that doing what he did was not simply an act of ignoring the law, it directly put at risk US intelligence assets and US national security. This is not a story about documents.
It is a story about a man with years of proven contempt for our intelligence community and disregard for their well-being and that of the country violating the law in ways that could profoundly compromise our security and threaten the lives of individuals who were serving the US.
We have never seen such behavior from a senior US government official, much less a president. And we are only speaking of what we know. Why was he so threatened by the intelligence community all along? Why did he feel they knew things about him that could be damaging?
Was it just consciousness of guilt due to his active solicitation of the support of a foreign enemy during the 2016 election? Was it more than that? What is it we don't know? What did he seek classified that he should not have? What secrets went missing before this point?
What were the consequences of the apparently voracious appetite for secrets his son-in-law Jared Kushner had? Why was he so actively interested in them? What were Trump's motives in taking secrets and obstructing the USG efforts to have them returned?
What happened to the documents while they were in Trump's custody? Do we have all the documents back? Were there documents stored at places other than Mar-a-Lago? What did he get his lackeys to do when they ran the IC? What were his plans for them were he to be reelected?
These are not "political" questions. These are questions that must be answered to understand what damage Trump and his inner circle may have done to our intelligence community, our intelligence assets worldwide, their safety and our security.
What we do is this: The same man who undertook this assault on US intelligence, led an attempted coup against the US government, attacked our allies, sought to gut NATO, sought to empower our enemies. This is not hyperbole, not speculation.
This is the reality of the Trump presidency. It must be seen for what it was and the man at the center of it must be seen for who he was and is--one of the greatest, most pernicious threats to US national security we have ever seen.

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More from @djrothkopf

Sep 9
Every single time you engage in the delusion that Trump has a "policy position" on traditional issues you normalize him. Trump has no beliefs, no traditional policy views. For him, policies are like his blue suit & dumb long red ties, a costume he wears to hide who he really is.
He is a terrorist calling himself a freedom fighter. This election is not about his tax policy versus that of Kamala Harris, even if he has proposals in that area. It is about the fact that he is a criminal, a traitor, a fraudster, a liar, the worst president in our history...
...a terrible human being who seeks to reward himself & his friends at the expense of everyone else. Everything he does is first and foremost about what is in it for him and occasionally for his supporters (because he needs to pay them off to get what he wants for himself.)
Read 7 tweets
Aug 28
Given the number of ways that a candidate can communicate directly with voters--the relevance and wisdom of doing so through intermediaries who will filter the news and who often will bend it to suit other agendas has diminished. That seems reasonable to me.
The argument that the press is the objective presenter of facts has been weakened as virtually all media seek to adjust their presentation of content to suit business or political objectives. There are fewer and fewer journalists who can be relied upon to seek objective truth.
Too many are compromised not only by the agenda of their company's owners but by their own history of access journalism or sensationalism or focusing on the trending rather than the important story. They howl at being ignored or bypassed. But they share some of the blame.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 14
The argument that Harris is somehow not speaking enough to the press is ridiculous on several levels: 1.) She actually does speak to the press, 2.) She has been visible constantly since she became the candidate, 3.) She has been clear and detailed about all her policy goals.
4.) She has been readily available to the press for four years. There are few questions about her that have not already been asked and answered. 5.) The goal of the campaign is for her to communicate with voters. So far, they seem to have responded well to what she has said.
6.) Her opponent is actually not campaigning, is primarily speaking to patsies in the press when he does speak to the media, and lies constantly so it doesn't matter what he is asked because he won't answer truthfully.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 8
Folks, if you want a US policy toward Israel and Gaza that is more focused on relieving the suffering the people of Gaza and achieving a lasting, just peace, disrupting the campaign of the one person most likely to deliver that is a bad idea. Especially when...
...she has indicated a willingness to meet with groups that share your views. She may not agree with all of your ideas and suggestions. But she is by far your best and only legitimate hope of change and weakening her is a crazily self-destructive process.
You may not like this reality. But you would like the alternatives--Trump or the status quo--much much much less. You may not feel you can wait for our political processes to work out...but frankly, there is no alternative choice that is available or possible.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 6
To all the geniuses who feel Harris should have picked Shapiro to "win Pennsylvania" I ask, um, when was the last time that was the reason a VP was picked? (Hint: It is seldom if ever the reason a VP candidate was picked.)
Here, let me do some quick math for you. Biden certainly didn't pick Harris to win a contested state. Trump picked neither Vance nor Pence to win contested states. HRC picked Tim Kaine to help in Va., that's true, and he helped. It was an outlier.
Do you think McCain picked Palin to win Alaska? Edwards did not help Kerry win North Carolina. Did Cheney get picked to help Bush in Montana? No. How about Lieberman to help Gore in Connecticut. No. Clinton did win Al Gore's home state of Tennessee...
Read 7 tweets
Jul 10
The recent discussion about Biden has gone through phases. The first was about the debate performance. The second was about whether that was a signal of potential problems to come. But we are now in a third phase which turns more fears about the state of the campaign.
These concerns are largely from political professionals (not commentators). They turn not just on setbacks since the debate but on the fact that the campaign was seemingly spinning its wheels even beforehand. I sense a bunch of it is from worried folks down the ballot.
These conversations seem to be continuing despite Biden's repeated statements that he is definitely running and in it for the long haul and have not been helped by recent polling data, the Cook Report downgrade of Dem battleground prospects, etc.
Read 5 tweets

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