In the old days when we were smart with spies and treason
Trump this morning (after the complaint was released):
Trump told a group of staffers from the US Mission to the United Nations this morning that he wanted to know who provided information to the whistleblower and alluded to possible retaliation, according to the New York Times.
The Times reports:
The remark stunned people in the audience, according to a person briefed on what took place, who had notes of what the president said. Mr. Trump made the statement about several minutes into his remarks before the group of about 50 people at the event intended to honor the United States Mission. At the outset, he condemned the former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s role in Ukraine at a time when his son Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Mr. Trump repeatedly referred to the whistle-blower and condemned the news media reporting on the complaint as ‘crooked.’ He then said the whistle-blower never heard the call in question. …
‘I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.’
The event was intended to honor the United States Mission to the UN, but of course Trump talked about what concerned him instead, because he always does.
And he fantasized aloud about taking revenge on the whistleblower…you know, the very thing the whistleblower law is meant to prevent.
Speculation is that it’s Dan Coats. Hats off to him if so. Hats off to whomever.
Hard to believe, I know, but DJT is even more profoundly stupid than I thought. According to the whistleblower account, the Situation Room ALWAYS listens in on presidential telephone calls to foreign heads of state, and the Situation Room ALWAYS produces a transcript of the call. DJT knows this. He must know it, because he leaned on the Situation Room people to store the information about *this* call on a special server where it would be classified and secret.
It’s not “spying,” for heaven’s sake.
I take it that basic literacy is no longer a requirement for NY Times writers.
About several minutes? Isn’t ‘several’ vague enough?
On that note: also in the NYT was this opinion piece by a writing instructor praising the whistleblower’s complaint as an excellent example of clear writing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/opinion/whistleblower-complaint.html