President Joe Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine has been controversial, and for good reasons: Many countries have banned the munitions because of the risks they pose to civilians. Nevertheless, many Republican critics of the Democratic White House — including former Vice President Mike Pence, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, and Sen. Tom Cotton — have endorsed Biden’s move.
Donald Trump, however, yesterday condemned the decision, insisting that the White House’s policy is “dragging us further toward World War III.” As NBC News reported, that’s not all the former president said.
Trump then attacked Biden for saying in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria over the weekend that the U.S. sent the munitions because the U.S. itself is low on ammunition. “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. … This is a war relating to munitions, and they are running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden said.
“A great breach of classified information,” Trump wrote in his long, rambling statement.
For now, let’s put aside the debate over cluster munitions — an important policy discussion, to be sure — and instead consider just how bizarre it was to see the former president, of all people, complain about breaches of classified information.
For one thing, Biden did not, in reality, disclose sensitive intelligence. In fact, as the NBC News report added, “Trump made the same claim about stockpiles at a 2019 White House news conference with Italy’s president.”
For another, the former president’s recent criminal indictment accuses him of, among other things, stored nuclear secrets at his glorified country club. With this in mind, maybe the Republican should think twice before throwing around casual accusations of classified information breaches.
But what’s especially striking is the fact that Trump is inclined to pick this fight in the first place. It was about two weeks ago when Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former White House communications director and press secretary, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt that she saw the then-president show classified documents to visitors at Mar-a-Lago. “He has no respect for classified information,” Grisham said. “Never did.”
It came against a backdrop of the federal criminal indictment, which pointed to other alleged instances in which the former president showed classified information to those who lacked the necessary clearance.
In fact, while Trump was in the White House, he was so careless with national security information that I was able to put together a Top 10 examples of the phenomenon. Revisiting our recent coverage:
#10. In May 2017, Trump had a chat with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in which the Republican shared information about dispatching two nuclear submarines off the coast of the Korean peninsula. By one account, Pentagon officials were “in shock“ over Trump’s willingness to share such information. “We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military’s belief that keeping submarines’ movements secret is key to their mission.
#9. In September 2019, during a photo-op at an event along the U.S./Mexico border, the president seemed eager to boast to reporters about detailed technological advancements in border security. It fell to Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the acting head of the Army Corps, to interject, “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that.”
#8. In July 2019, Trump had an unsecured conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, while the ambassador was in a Ukrainian restaurant within earshot of others, in which Trump sought information on Ukraine helping target the president’s domestic political opponents. Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House Situation Room and a former chief of staff to the CIA director, said of the call, “The security ramifications are insane.”
#7. In February 2018, Trump ignored the pleas of many U.S. officials and recklessly declassified information from the so-called “Nunes Memo” in the hopes of advancing a partisan scheme.
#6. In February 2017, Trump discussed sensitive details about North Korea’s ballistic missile tests with the prime minister of Japan at a Mar-a-Lago dining area, in view of wealthy civilians/customers.
#5. In early October 2019, Trump publicly discussed American nuclear weapons in Turkey, something U.S. officials have traditionally avoided disclosing and/or confirming.
#4. In August 2019, Trump published a tweet about a failed Iranian launch, which included a detailed photo. As MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported, it wasn’t long before experts marveled at Trump’s recklessness with classified material. #3. In October 2019, Trump needlessly blurted out all kinds of tactical and operational details about the al-Baghdadi mission in Syria. As NBC News reported at the time, “A few of those colorful details were wrong. Many of the rest were either highly classified or tactically sensitive, and their disclosure by the president made intelligence and military officials cringe, according to current and former U.S. officials.” #2. In 2020, Trump disclosed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program to Bob Woodward, to the surprise of national security insiders. #1. Just four months into Trump’s presidency, he welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak into the Oval Office — at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin — for a visit that was never fully explained. It was in this meeting that Trump revealed highly classified information to his Russian guests for no apparent reason. The Washington Post reported at the time, “The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.” The Wall Street Journal added, “According to one U.S. official, the information shared was highly sensitive and difficult to acquire and was considered extraordinarily valuable.” It’s never been altogether clear why Trump simply handed this to Putin’s representatives. This list, incidentally, is not comprehensive. There are other examples. If Trump really wants to have a conversation about “a great breach of classified information,” he might not like where the discussion ends up. This post updates our related recent coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
