Right in the middle of his war on leakers, Donald Trump has retweeted a report by Fox News based on leaked classified information. The material was sensitive enough that Trump's own ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, refused to discuss it.
Of course, the Tweet Trump thought nothing of retweeting came from his favorite propaganda show on the propaganda network, Fox & Friends:
Think Progress explains:
The report, headlined “US spy satellites detect North Korea moving anti-ship cruise missiles to patrol boat,” cites “U.S. officials with knowledge of the latest intelligence in the region” who said “U.S. spy agencies detected the rogue communist regime loading two anti-ship cruise missiles on a patrol boat on the country’s east coast just days ago.”
Later on Fox & Friends, Haley refused to discuss the report and decried the leak behind it.
HALEY: I can't talk about anything that's classified. And if that's in the newspaper that's a shame.
[…]
But I will tell you it's incredibly dangerous when things get out into the press like that. You are not only just getting a scoop on something, you are playing with people's lives. And this has got to stop. Whatever the leaks are coming from, if somebody thinks they are getting power or fame from it, all you are doing is putting Americans in danger.
And let’s not forget, even if Trump has, that just two weeks ago, he demanded that the attorney general get “much tougher” on intelligence leaks:
"I want the attorney general to be much tougher," Trump said at a news conference. "I want the leaks from intelligence agencies, which are leaking like rarely have they ever leaked before, at a very important level. These are intelligence agencies we cannot have that happen."
Attorney General Jeff Sessions complied and announced a crackdown on leaks in a press conference last week:
Sessions condemned the “staggering number of leaks” and said that in the first six months of the Trump administration, the department had already received “nearly as many criminal referrals” involving disclosure of classified information as it had received in the last three years combined.
“I have this message for the intelligence community: the Department of Justice is open for business,” Sessions said. “And I have this warning for would-be leakers: don’t do it.”
In that same presser, Sessions also threatened to subpoena journalists.
I guess he just forgot to mention that it’s OK to leak so long as it’s to a network that slavishly flatters Trump.
Putting all the hypocrisy aside, the more serious question, as CNN's Chris Cuomo pointed out, is why Trump is tweeting anonymously sourced reports of intelligence when he has access to all the actual intelligence?
Watch Haley refuse to discuss the classified intelligence that Trump blithely retweeted to his 35.3 million followers below, on the August 8, 2017 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.
Hey, John Kelly — you say you’re gonna seek out and “fire whoever’s responsible” for the WH leaks?
You both might wanna start with the guy in the Oval Office . . .
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