To say that I’m “alarmed,: or “concerned,” or “fearful,” or “dismayed,” or any of those other standard goo-goo noises that the media regularly makes to describe feelings to another blazing stupidity by our Pampers President, would be kind of a misstatement. What I actually am is royally pissed off. And while I may not have quite the same “bully pulpit” that His Lowness does, this place does afford me a nice little soap box, and a bull horn, and I’m damn well going to .use them.
It has been reported today that senior national security personnel are becoming alarmed at what they see as Trump’s “willful ignorance.” They have already tried such constructs as limiting verbal descriptions of issues to 2-3 sentences to keep from losing his attention, and inserting as many images of Thomas the Tank Engine as possible to keep him focused. All of this is old news, it just shows that Rex Tillerson nailed it in one when he called El Pendejo Presidente a “fucking moron. But now it is being reported that security personnel going in to brief the President are being instructed to avoid saying things that contradict his personal opinions or publicly stated policy.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG! This has never been, cannot be, and never will be a viable option for dealing with any President of the United States! Their sole function is to provide the President with the best possible information in order to protect the United States.The fact that the Toddler in Chief might choose to sop a mope, throw his Tevo controller across the room, or call them nasty names on camera or on Twitter is not a valid excuse for them to abrogate their basic responsibility to provide that information.
But there is a more fundamental reason why this is such a disastrous tactic to use. It screws us all over. If there is one that will never be said about Donald Trump, it is that he is a sneaky or sly individual. Trump has to go out of his way to publicly show us how sneaky and devious he is, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of being sneaky and devious. If his military and intelligence chiefs tell him something that goes against his personal grain, Trump will never in a million years keep those facts to himself. He will come right out on TV, or on Twitter, and tell us all about what chuckle heads his intel chiefs are, and tell us what they said to show us why. Which means that the rest of us will know what they said. And there are still 65-70% of the population who don’t live in the dystopian Brigadoon that Trump wanders around in, like a 6 week old puppy that got out of the back yard. And the rest of us would like to know what they honestly think.
Look, I have nothing but the highest regard for our intelligence and national security professionals, even more so with the impossible situation they find themselves in. But they’re in a no win situation here. If they tell the President something that he doesn’t want to hear, he explodes and calls them nasty names on TV and on Twitter, and belittles their worth and value. But on the other hand, if they become aware of a potential national security issue, and if they don’t tell Trump about it, and if it happens, then Trump is going to scream to high heaven that his intelligence agencies are all pathetic losers for not knowing this, and how to they defend themselves against that? Say that they jnew it all along, but didn’t want to piss him off?
Look, a guy who outed a top level Israeli source to Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office is not going to keep anything that doesn’t have to do with Vladimir Putin and money laundering under a bushel basket. Their responsibility requires them to make their best information available to him, and more importantly, by proxy, to us, so that we can put appropriate pressure on other government officials and politicians to ensure that tragic mistakes spawned by blind ignorance and stupidity are not made. Better to take the heat, and be on the side of the angels on this one.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
