Trump’s endless admiration and pandering to Russian President Vladimir Putin, his quid pro quo phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and his berating of the leaders of allied countries like Great Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been the subject of news stories, but intelligence and White House officials who spoke to CNN say those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Officials say that Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders are often “alarming,” including his tendency to pander to violent dictators, his utter ineptitude in matters of foreign policy and current events, and his berating of allies. The calls have been so alarming that they spoke on the condition of anonymity to reporters at Trump’s constant whipping boy, CNN.
CNN reports that:
‘In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials…that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States.’
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1277721812487622662
The reporting matches other reports from previous news stories, including the recent story told by Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton. Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened details phone calls to China during which Trump openly asked for help with the 2020 election and tied congressionally approved aid to Ukraine with damaging reports on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. That phone call with Ukraine led to Trump’s impeachment, although the Senate failed to convict him.
According to Axios:
‘Bolton told ABC News that Trump “directly linked the provision of that [security] assistance with the investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine — the central allegation that saw him impeached in the House and later acquitted in the Senate.’
JUST IN: John Bolton has told ABC News that President Trump "directly linked the provision of that [security] assistance with the investigation" into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine https://t.co/l5r3FvKqOj
— Axios (@axios) June 22, 2020
The reporting also aligns with that of Trump’s former secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, who resigned from his position after releasing a revealing resignation letter pointing to Trump’s dangerous foreign policy of aligning with enemies and alienating allies as his justification for leaving.
In Mattis’s resignation letter, he wrote that he was leaving his post because:
‘My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.’
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation on Thursday.
In his resignation letter to the president, Mattis implicitly criticized him for not treating allies with respect and for not being "clear-eyed" about U.S. enemies and competitors.https://t.co/S8wG5RcBbF
— euronews (@euronews) December 21, 2018
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
