In the upside-world of Donald Trump’s presidency, only Trump tells the truth, security clearances are bargaining chips you must flatter the president to hold, every trusted news outlet is part of a deep state conspiracy, and immigration is the root of all evil.
If you believe any of these things are true, you’ve bought into the president’s tweets despite mountains of evidence to disprove it.
In yet another example of a panicked U.S. president’s morning breakdown, Trump lashed out at former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI Director James Clapper, The New Yorker, Democrats, and immigrants. In other words, it’s just another day in Trump World.
Trump is correct that Clapper made statements during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union that Brennan’s word choices in discussing his thoughts on Donald Trump – words like “treason,” for example – are problematic and contributed to the revocation of Brennan’s security clearance. Of course, lashing out at a president has never led to such results before and, in fact, revoking security clearance for any reason by a U.S. president has never happened before, so there is absolutely no precedent for it. However, it is what Clapper didn’t say that rings most loudly.
He never said he disagreed with Brennan’s assessment.
In yet another claim by Trump that the “fake news media” is out to get him, he lashed out at his hometown publication, The New Yorker. The outrage stems from a story reported on Monday.
As The New Yorker reported:
‘As Trump stepped up his public and private attacks on Obama, some of the new President’s advisers thought that he should take the extraordinary step of denying Obama himself access to intelligence briefings that were made available to all of his living predecessors. Trump was told about the importance of keeping former Presidents, who frequently met with foreign leaders, informed. In the end, Trump decided not to exclude Obama, at the urging of [former national security advisor H.R.] McMaster.’
This isn’t a difficult story to believe. Considering that Trump has publicly said that Obama abused his powers by spying on the Trump campaign, had his “wires tapped,” and is a “sick” guy, the accusations match all the reasons Trump now says he intends to revoke other security clearances. At this point, anyone is more trustworthy than Trump, but the article makes sense in the context it was written.
Twitter also lashed out at Trump for his divisive rhetoric. See some of their comments below:
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license
