Yesterday’s revelation that the nuclear secrets of another country were among the Top Secret and classified documents that were seized August 8 at Mar-a-Lago brought up some very sobering facts.

Fact: there are only nine countries in the world with nuclear capability, to wit, U.S., Russia, China, North Korea, France, UK, India, Israel, and Pakistan. If it was one of the other eight, besides the U.S., which one was it? Who did Trump want to leverage or had he already leveraged somebody? This is what Michael Cohen said.

“So, this is all about power for Donald Trump. This is all about him still remaining relevant and exerting the power over the United States as extortion in the event you indict me or members of my family, if you indict me or try to incarcerate me, I have nuclear secrets that I have instructed some of my followers to turn over to our adversaries. That’s what I believe. It’s all about him maintaining power not just in this country but in foreign countries as well. The dangerous part that we’re all doing right now is creating these hypotheticals. Are the nuclear secrets the secrets of Israel? And maybe he’s handed them to Mohammed bin Salman and that’s why they gave Jared Kushner $2.5 billion.”

Cohen is spot on about one thing and that’s the fact that even talking about this hypothetically shows you how bad things are. The reign of Donald Trump, while mercifully only four years, was enough to have alienated a lot of our allies in the world and cause the rest of them to look at us guardedly.

You can’t blame them. I wouldn’t trust us either, after electing Donald Trump.

And this fiasco exposes us badly in the intelligence community. There’s another clip here you need to see, where former CIA agent Phil Mudd explains how this fiasco at Mar-a-Lago could impede intelligence gathering going forward.

“There is a phrase we use that is sources and methods. If you released this information, the adversary work we’re collecting on will understand how we acquired it, through intercepted communications, they can both shut down that channel of information so that we can’t collect anymore, and there’s a secondary piece. They can see what we cannot collect and what we seem not to know and hoping that the U.S. penetration of the nuclear program is not complete, and it gives a lot of clues to a foreign adversary if this stuff ever gets out.”

Trump understands none of this. Say what you will about Dubya, he was not a good president for so many reasons, but he understood the importance of basics like classified documents. He didn’t pull a stunt like this. Trump is oblivious. He only understands life in the most simplistic of tabloid terms, you get dirt on somebody so that you can leverage them in the future. He’s got the mind of a petty mobster, not even a smart mobster, but a low level one, with aspirations to be a capo but not having the brains.

Trump didn’t need brains to rise to improbable heights because he had television. That was his strong suit, his only suit, and he played it masterfully. Unfortunately, life isn’t a TV show and there are real world consequences for his actions and we are now seeing what they are.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. Cohen is absolutely spot on. I am 100% sure this is what happened, and then Saudi Arabia shared the info with Iran. Trump is going to make a run for it when he gets indicted for espionage.

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    • I believe (and hope) Garland will be ready for any type of running away

      My concern is Trump’s old ass taking a dirt nap before he starts to serve time

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    • And what do you suppose would have prompted the Saudis to share that information with Iran? Saudi Arabia and Israel are part of an alliance AGAINST Iran and the Saudis have been in a “Cold War” with Iran since 1979 (the Saudis and Iranians weren’t exactly all that friendly during the Shah’s reign but the Saudis didn’t feel the Shah was challenging their position as “Head of the Muslim World”).

      Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in a lot of proxy fights over the last 40 years (notably in both the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars) so the idea that the Saudis would turn over any intel they have on Israel to Iran is preposterous.

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  2. Remember that early on OVAL OFFICE meeting Trump had with the top two Russians in DC – and tried to HIDE? The one where credible reporting indicates he gave up so-called code word information, info. that was provided by an ally under the strictest of confidences because it involved HUMINT. And it was fucking Israel, who has always been far, far more of a taker of what we and others offer than a provider of usable intel who had what they’d given us compromised by Trump. THEIR guy as they went to great lengths to let everyone know. I’ll be the Shin Bet had to be physically restrained from beating the living shit out of Bibi Netanyahu for doing so much to help deliver Trump to the WH. They might be self service assholes but they are professionals and had to be scared shitless at the prospect of what Trump would blab.

    Back to that Russian leak directly from an American President don’t forget that the CIA had to quietly extract someone from Russia not long after. And an important source inside the very Kremlin was lost!

    But what’s made my blood run cold more than once is once again being reinforced in world capitols and allied intelligence services – a HUGE percentage of crucial information is at least potentially compromised. And ASS LICKING, BALL SWEAT SUCKING Republicans who fight each other for the privilege to do those things on Trump, as well as those who just want everyone to forget Trump like they did Bush 43 and that they’d ever supported him are toxic, nasty pieces of SHIT! Few have been able to bring themselves to denounce him, but for those who have and who have stuck to their denouncements and begun working to hold him to account I’m grateful and salute them.

    The rest can go fuck themselves.

    The point is that the rest of the free world is glad to have someone like Biden back in charge but they can see for themselves that Jan. 6 wasn’t some one-off. They can see the possibility of Trump or someone worse, and worse than that the end of the America we’ve all known. An America where every technological acheivement and every bit of information including intelligence on the worst people and countries in the world will be known by those people because a FASCIST American President, supported by CONSERVATIVES (even the non fascist ones – the ones who just don’t want their fucking taxes to go up!) will let them know what we know. And how we’ve countered their efforts and coordinated with allies to continue doing so.

    Every one of you conservatives that gets on here and whines about people like me hating Trump – YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT I DO BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING TRAITOR! And so are YOU for supporting him. Luckily my body only got beat up while I was on active duty. I was never wounded and none of my scars are from my time in the Marines. But my dad was scarred both physically and as I’d come to understand after he was dead and I knew more psychologically too. As were so many of the other men in my hometown who fought in and won WWII. And I’ve known people wounded and killed in Vietnam and since.

    Trump and people like you who have enabled him betray the service, sacrifice and blood of every person (not just in uniform I might add) who has put themselves in harm’s way in our hsitory.

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    • To the above, I will only add this: W was your one and only mulligan, Republicans. After Trump, no one will ever again give you grace or benefit of the doubt. So long as you harbor the dangerously treasonous in the name of “solidarity”, you are unwelcome here.

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      • I’ve said something similar numerous times, but more in the context of our allies in the world. W was a bout of what they thought, or at least hoped was temporary insanity from the American electorate. Obama getting elected and then re-elected (and by margins that just eat Trump up inside!) made them think that for all the noise, there was a limit to what conservatives would put up with for their goddamned tax cuts and less regulation. They were literally horrified that Trump managed to wind up in the WH. Around the world all the headlines of major news outlets in the free world were variations on the theme “How can Americans be so stupid?” And for those who blather about Trump making the world respect us, NO U.S. President, and unless I’m mistaken no other Head of State no matter how “out there” has stood in front of the UN General Assembly and LITERALLY had the entire room laugh in their face! But Faux Nooz doesn’t show that kind of stuff so the MAGA goobers don’t know it and don’t want to hear about it, much less look at video of the moment which is readily available. It’s been reported that recently while in discussion with a major ally’s leader President Biden said something to the effect that the America he’d know and worked with in the past was back. And the devastating reply was “But for how long?” The GOP is telling the world the U.S. can’t be trusted for more than four years at a time, and increasingly that if they get hold of the levers of power again including the WH the U.S. will never be a truly free country again. We will descend into a Fascist State. If we work our asses off and get a LOT of luck in a generation we can stop the bleeding and bind up the wounds. But the scars, ugly scare will be visible forever and it will take literally multiple generations for us to again become the undisputed leader of the free world. And maybe not then.

        I won’t lie. It hurts that Trump was right and that I was a sucker to become a Marine and serve my country and risk all. Nothing was in it but a desire to do my own small part to ensure we kept inching forward to becoming the country set out in the founding ideals. To help keep us free to work on that goal. It was enough. And conservatives have rendered it a fucking useless time in my life. As much as that hurts, what eats me alive inside is my dad and others like him who suffered devastating wounds, and knowing people who left their homes to serve and came back in coffins, or would eventually die from complications of the wound they received. Trump and EVERY GODDAMNE PERSON THAT VOTE FOR HIM AND STIL SUPPORTS HIME AND/OR WOULD VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN have made everyone’s service and sacrifice worthless.

        I would wait for months, even years for my turn to walk into a room where he was tied down on his back on a thin rubber mattress on the floor to puke, piss and shit all over his worthless orange body. And revel in his whiny complaints about how unfair it all was. What he DESERVES is an old middle eastern thing that Saddam Hussein loved to mete out: Being strung up naked with his arms upstretched and his feet spread but on the ground next to a couple of big barrels filled with a strong brine. And a few long canes in each. Every person walking nearby under standing orders to take a cane out of that brine and give him a whack! (The brine would make the wound hurt more!)

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    • They are indeed traitors. Most of the worst in congress NEVER SERVED A DAY. I’m a navy vet. I had five uncles in WW2. My dad was a Korean war vet. My other uncle was an original green beret & did several tours in Vietnam & was wounded for his trouble. They want a fight? I was raised by fighters. These are cowards. Oh they get full of themselves dressing up & intimidating unarmed voters & school boards. They have no idea how many true patriots there are who will not bow down to their bullshit. Too much patriot blood has been spilt to ever give up no matter what comes down the pike. Fascism will not rule America. They took their shot AND FAILED. Load up your U-Hauls dumbshits.

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      • When that goddmaned Col. wouldn’t let the Officer Selection Board in the District approve me for OCS due to my age (26 by then) I turned around and enlisted and volunteered for infantry. This was just after the Barracks bombing in Beirut I might add. I’d been accepted by the Platoon Leader’s Class (there was a large and active group of future Marine Officers at my nearby alma mater) long before and I was compelled to pitch in and do what I could. As I said, I wound up being lucky. Unlike so many others I knew before and would come to know. But as a grunt I’ll say if these asshats including some who come on here and try to intimidate us decide to come for me I’m going to take a LOT of killing. And, even though I’ve long since become agnostic the old saying “I’ll go to hell in a crowd” applies. I don’t know if the messages ever got passed along to him, but I let the sedition caucus asswipe in the House who is from my hometown (he’s a few years younger – his older sister and I were classmates and friends until Trump came along – despite our political differences we had healthy and honest debates) know exactly how little I think of him. Maybe a staffer I talked to or who’d open an email from me had met her when she visited him in DC and realized I was a real person who he really did know. But I never heard back from him. And someday, hopefully many years from now when what’s left of me is buried with my dad there will be no honor guard from the local veteran’s groups in my now firmly Trump hometown. No one to play taps. But maybe the funeral director will honor my wish to at least play it on a smartphone. If Howard is alive I think he’d do that much for me. But no honors will take place, or Masonic Rites even though I’m a Past Master of the Lodge there. Such is the America Trump has wrought. And people wonder why I sometimes suffer bouts of depression! But anger and hatred of Trump and his supporters fuels me. They whine about me hating them but I didn’t start all of it. They hate ME! And get all pissy because I refuse to cower and make it clear I hate them right back!

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        • The trumpies are all victims of a CULT & refuse to know the ‘human’ that has perverted their brains. That ‘human’ is, & always was his entire life, a con, thief, total liar, cheat & all things disgusting & pure EVIL. Even Evangelicals have been perverted into this fraud – the surest sign that he represents the SATAN concept – even those who are not religious recognize that this is what trump is.

  3. Cohen’s theory is my mom’s. But why stop there? Why not Ukraine’s, South Korea’s, England’s? When it comes to this man and making a buck, NOTHING should be considered off the table.

    • Except it couldn’t have been about Ukraine’s nukes. They are the ONLY country that had nuke and gave them up. There was a treaty involved in which they, the U.S. and yes Russia too were signatories. In return for allowing the international community to come in and dismatntle their considerable nuclear arsenel they received guarantees from NATO and Russia that their country wouldn’t become a battleground. Putin BROKE that treaty with his invasion. That will be important to remember when it’s time to settle accounts when Russia finally has to admit defeat.

        • Yes and no. It’s complicated. And their program was unique, or at least vastly different than that of counties known to have developed nuclear weapons that made them (including us) part of the unholy club who has possessed nukes. For starters, early on they gave up on developing plutonium thermonuclear weapons, opting for enriched uranium weapons. Of a half dozen they’d wind up assembling only one was considered to be operational. I say considered because NO tests on their version of a nuke were ever tested. And it had a design yield of only six kilotons which less than half of those dropped in Japan to end WWII. (“Little Boy” which was dropped on Hiroshima was fifteen kilotons and “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki was twenty) South Africa did decide to test their design but intelligence from many nations found out and the test, which wasn’t even going to test a full working model but rather be a “cold” nuke with a non-fissionable core was called off and the entire program cancelled shortly afterwards.

          So, technically South Africa developed nukes but a) they were primitive compared to those of other countries that have developed and deployed them, and b) it’s unclear if their design was a viable one as it was never tested. Even today with supercomputers to model things out such stuff is still somewhat empirical and without a test it’s no certainty a given design will work.

          Ukraine on the other hand had a large number of Soviet nukes deployed on its soil, designs which were large in yield thermonuclear weapons that had been tested and were known to work in all their deadly efficiency. Even allowing for the even then (by the end of the Cold War) probability that a combination of the corruption rampant in the old USSR and inadequate maintenance there were more than enough nukes to unleash the horrors of what we know would happen if a full-blown war with nukes were to take place.

          Reasonable people can disagree but since we know how limited and relatively crude South Africa’s program was (even with help from Israel of all countries) and that they never even “cold tested” a model of the one nuke they had assembled they felt was actually operational (remember, they had a lot going on and the kind of money required for a nuclear weapons program wasn’t something they could easily afford) to me it’s a stretch crediting them as some do with having developed nuclear weapons and then giving them up. We simply (thankfully) don’t know if they developed working nukes. But when the Soviet Union fell they had a shitload DEPLOYED in Ukraine! Again, I for one believe it’s fair to say that no other country has come close to doing what Ukraine did in giving up nukes, and that since one doesn’t have to get into the realm of “technically it was possible” as with South Africa they are the only country to give up a nuclear weapon arsenal. A formidable one and they did so voluntarily on the promise their country wouldn’t become a battleground, and in particular that if Russia decided to come a calling (as they’ve done) that western powers including and especially NATO would help them resist an invasion.

          • The times are very fluid now, Trump is obviously leaning very hard on a worthless judge, doing the nasty form work to stall the take-apart of Trump’s investigations since Mar-a-Golf findings …

            Trump has shown his total lack of any concern for human lives other than his own or his immediate family, sometimes I wonder if he can see his own family through that purple rage and super pressurized neck blood vessels when his Malignant Narcissism is challenged, not taking ANY responsibility for the Pandemic, letting it get out of hand, hiding safety masks, face shields and other supplies from front line teams dying from exposure to the Covid-19, giving their lives to save others, (about 1500 nurses and doctors) …

            Obama, warned the asshole about the coming Pandemic, with colorful pamphlets that showed how the CDC had a complete lab system ready to go at first signs of the Virus in the US, even a trained treatment, distribution system … because of less than zero intelligence, and, heavens, how horrible, Obama cut him with about a 2 second barb at a TV broadcast of dinner for reporters, his immediate reaction as a so-called president was to savage the CDC’s Pandemics lab, throw out the labs and their equipment, let the lab geeks go, because, well Obama … Trump must be VERY PROUD, we have our first million citizen’s deaths under his massive belt …

  4. I’m going to jump around a bit. First Trump tries to establish his own backchannel to Putin. That doesn’t work so then he ditches his interpreter so he can give Putin the dirt. He tries to blackmail Ukrainian friends. Most of his actions come straight out of the comrades playbook. I could go on for hours. Anyone with half a brain and aTV could see this coming before he set foot in the Oval Office.
    I think the root problem is the failure of our educational system. Go look at the test our students had to pass to get out of eighth grade a hundred years ago. I submit that every born citizen who wants to vote must pass the same test refugees from other countries need to pass to earn their U.S. citizenship. It’s called civics, something a lot of Republican voters can’t even define.
    Every underhanded criminal act Trump claims others are doing is exactly what he has been doing all along.
    One of the most troubling issue is that all of the documents Trump stole had obviously not been properly monitored, that anyone, including the president, can walk away with Top Secret documents. This is dereliction of duty combined with criminal intent. Period.
    I hope President Biden has already directed an inquiry and hopefully we can prevent further breaches.
    It’s going to take a lot of time and work to clean up the stinky slime Trump and company left behind.

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  5. A follow up to my comments. I never saw combat but I saw a lot of the casualties while in the service. Many of my family and friends buried at Arlington Cemetery have heard me crying at their graves over what Trump did to this country.

  6. Look at people who who go to Trump rallies! They lack basic knowledge and intelligence. They are just morons to believe him for what he is. What’s surprising is even the educated House of Reps from Republican Party act the same way. Look at Lindsey, Rubio etc., these guys brains are fried or Trump got dirt on them that they are afraid.

    4 years of Trump Presidency and 245+ years our nation’s reputation is in dirt.

  7. Maga Republicans have to complete their cognitive dissidence (doubling down) on their bubble bursting to give them time to wriggle out of the embarrassment of being a Trump cultist. It’s slowly happening!
    Trump, being a simple transactional man, has always found his power in having and using inside information to control others and empower him and his crime syndicate. Of course he knew the value of the classified and top secret information – he knew the value was enormous and any man like that would jump at selling it to the folks with deepest pockets (Saudis, Chinese…).
    All this China China stuff and drain the swamp nonsense was an obvious smoke screen to disembowel the fbi and cia so they they’d be too weakened to go after him.
    And using the gullible evangelicals and orthodox religious as pawns is disgusting because of the horrendous affects on their membership. Disgraceful!!

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