Earlier this week, the New York Times followed up on a Washington Post story which claimed that President Trump had revealed top secret information to a Russian foreign minister. Since then, the entire mainstream media has been abuzz with talk about whether on not this was treason, and printing guesses on how quickly he will be impeached.
A round of fevered gasping could be heard from coast to coast when it came to light that the intelligence shared had to do with military plans of the Islamic State.
Of course, none of the left-wing outlets which were so anxious to print the story stopped for a moment to ask this question: How can the plans of a common enemy- a terrorist organization be classified? This would be like the heads of two LA County police departments sharing information on the movements of local gangs, and some barely post-pubescent paparazzi rushing to his desk to call it interdepartmental espionage.
Well, the rest of us can roll our eyes all we like, but this isn’t going to stop the anti-Trump hysteria from raging on full force.
But it gets stranger. Even in the original New York Times story’s author admits that the president did not break the law by sharing the information. That is to say, no crime would have been committed.
Nevertheless, the drumbeat goes on unabated. White House officials have said that no sensitive information was shared, and many commentators have noted that collaborating with Russian officials on ways to combat Islamic terror is well within the jurisdiction of the president.
What is clear is that this is just an attempt to diversify the Russian hacking claim which is losing steam, and has never produced any meaningful evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia to effect the 2016 election.
So far, the only real evidence of anything remotely like hacking of the DNC is known to have occurred was triggered when John Podesta lost his cell phone – which was protected with an extremely insecure password. He carelessly left his phone in a taxi with the with the word “password” set as the password to his phone. That, and that alone is the only “hacking” that was ever done to compromise the security of the DNC’s computer files. On top of that, the theft of Podesta’s phone happened in Washington DC- and could have been accomplished by the most unsophisticated thieves imaginable.
So, as the fruitless Russian hacking hearings drone on in the nation’s capital, this equally pointless story about Trump spilling the beans to Russia in person is only another limp-wristed attempt to keep the whole narrative afloat. Unfortunately for people who watch mainstream television news, just hearing about something like this is reason enough to think that there’s some good reason for all the feigned suspicion.
But the White House has been very clear. Lt. General H.R. McMaster has been quoted as saying simply and flatly, “I was there in the room. It didn’t happen.” In a later interview, he clarified his position a bit further saying, “At no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.”
The research group Quoth the Raven summed the whole event up rather concisely when they tweeted; “CNN citing HuffPo citing Maddow citing the Washington Post citing sources citing scribble on a cocktail napkin at the D.C. Hyatt lounge.”
A whole host of high-powered White House officials were present at the meeting, and it would be difficult to imagine that the president would do something as illegal and as crazy as giving top secret information to a Russian official in such a crowd. In attendance, along with supporting staffers were; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster as well as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, Dina Powell. Each one of these individuals has stated plainly and repeatedly that nothing like what the NYT and WaPo are reporting occurred.
“The story is false,” Powell said. “The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”
“A broad range of subjects were discussed among which were common efforts and threats regarding counter-terrorism,” Tillerson added. “During that exchange, the nature of specific threats was discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods or military operations.”
Meanwhile, cooler heads have stated that there is no way to know what was said at that meeting – but there is certainly nothing to suggest the president released state secrets. Not having a good reason to wring their hands on everything Trump-related, however, has never stopped the MSM before. So, why should it stop them Now?
~ Liberty Planet
