Biden: T-Rump’s Longtime ‘Erratic Behavior’ Curtails Intel Briefings

February 5, 2021

As all things must past, maybe the T-Rump will, too. However, until then he should be kept away from anything he could use, directly or indirectly, as a weapon of greedy revenge, especially national secrets and intelligence.
He’s a horrifying individual with a most-terrible history.

Therefore, Joe Biden says T-Rump has been unhinged for awhile so no-way-Jose he’s told anything:

Joe spoke it straight — via Bloomberg this afternoon:

“I think not,” Biden said when asked during an interview with CBS News if Trump should still be briefed.
“Because of his erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection,” he added, referring to Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol last month.

Former presidents in the past have been given routine intelligence briefings and access to classified materials.
But Biden has faced pressure from Democrats and former national security officials to bar Trump from receiving the briefings because it might raise security risks.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week the matter was “under review.”

Biden said he believes there is “no need” for Trump, whose second impeachment trial gets underway next week, to be made privy to sensitive material or given routine briefings.

“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?” the president said in the interview, which was broadcast on Friday evening.

Just last month, Sue Gordon, former Trump Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, penned an op/ed in The Washington Post near-pleading for Biden not to allow T-Rump intel beifings after Jan. 20, and in one simple act ‘…can mitigate one aspect of the potential national security risk posed by Donald Trump, private citizen.’
Further:

His post-White House “security profile,” as the professionals like to call it, is daunting.
Any former president is by definition a target and presents some risks.
But a former president Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.
He leaves, unlike his predecessors who embraced the muted responsibilities of being a “former,” with a stated agenda to stay engaged in politics and policy.
No departing president in the modern era has hinted at or planned on becoming a political actor immediately after leaving office.

And Biden apparently has heeded advice from experienced professionals. In fact, Biden might have been influenced by Gordon’s essay as his administration pondered T-Rump’s future regarding national security.

Really a no-brainer if you consider what the T-Rump has done the last four years — not all of his shit, that would take up a huge chunk of the InterWebs — just reference the intel portion. As president, T-Rump had access to top secret shit on all kinds of goings-on, and he’s such an asshole braggart, it’s just a matter of when.
Last Novemeber, The Washington Post reported in a lengthy piece revealing T-Rump a massive security risk.
The Post interviewed all kinds of experts, and recapped his bullshit, for instance:

In a now infamous Oval Office meeting in 2017, Trump told Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the United States about highly classified information the United States had received from an ally about Islamic State threats to aviation, which jeopardized the source, according to people familiar with the incident.

By bragging about intelligence capabilities, Trump put them at risk.
And he has been similarly careless when trying to intimidate adversaries.
In August 2019, he tweeted a detailed aerial image of an Iranian launchpad.
Such photos are among the most highly guarded pieces of intelligence because they can reveal precise details about technical spying capabilities.
Using publicly available records, Internet sleuths were able to determine which satellite took the image and identify its orbit based on the image Trump disclosed.

Experts worry that Trump’s braggadocio may lead him to spill secrets at a rally or in a tête-à-tête with a foreign adversary.
One former official imagined Trump boasting about the technical features of Air Force One or where the United States had dispatched spy drones.

Trump has also demonstrated a willingness to declassify information for political advantage, pushing his senior officials to reveal documents from the 2016 probe of Russian election interference and possible links to Trump’s campaign.

Enough said about that one dumb-ass aspect of the T-Rump’s horrid existence.

(Illustration: ‘Tower of Babel,’ a 1928 woodcut by M. C. Escher, found here).

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