(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Keep Hitting Trump - and the Whole GOP - as a National Security Risk [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-10 This article on CNN (Trump bemoans indictment as ‘political hit job’ as he hits the campaign trail with indicted aide) included a paragraph that stood out as incomprehensible even by Republican standards: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who entered the GOP race earlier this week, said Saturday that Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents is not something voters want to spend their time on. “When we’re on the road in Iowa the last two days and here in New Hampshire talking about the economy, energy policy, national security – those are the things that are hitting every American every single day,” Burgum told Fox News. [emphases added] But if voters are talking about national security, then mishandling of highly classified documents goes to the heart of that issue. So they should be spending their time on it. And we should be helping them. And it’s not just Trump who’s putting our security at risk. Every Republican who defends Trump is doing so. This is another point we have to stress. Jack Smith hinted at how to go about it: "The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our Armed Forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. "Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. "Violations of those laws put our country at risk.” www.npr.org/… [emphasis added] Lots of conservative voters support the military.This is one way to reach them. Trump has a history of this (Trump’s disdain for intelligence rules foretold his indictment WaPo): During his four years in the White House, Donald Trump routinely flouted the laws, rules and conventions that govern the handling of classified information. . . . The way President Donald Trump handled classified information, which some of his own advisers considered reckless, was his official prerogative. Now, as a private citizen, it’s allegedly a crime. And again, every Republican who defends Trump needs to be confronted with this. Notice that none of them, from what I’ve seen, are defending him on substance. They’re all saying it’s political, it’s Biden politicizing the DOJ, but they aren’t addressing the charges themselves. Make them talk about the actual charges. That means Ron DeSatan in particular. From the CNN story: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponization of federal law enforcement” while vowing, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.” In fairness, a couple of Republicans are doing that. From the CNN story: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another onetime ally and close adviser to Trump who has emerged as his chief critic in the 2024 race, described the details of the indictment as “damning.” “This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.” and Another Trump critic, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the former president should drop out of the race “for the good of the country.” “This is unprecedented that we have a former president criminally charged for mishandling classified information, for obstruction of justice. This obviously will be an issue during the campaign,” Hutchinson told Tapper on Friday in a separate interview. Elsewhere, Trump’s former personal lawyer Bill Barr, also known as the Attorney General of the United States, who had denounced the New York state indictment as “political”, had this to say just before Smith announced his indictment of Trump: “Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.” www.msn.com/… Mitt Romney also gets it, both in the extra care DOJ went to and in the national security ramifications: Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in a statement Friday that Donald Trump "brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so." "These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection," Romney said. (Romney also voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, so clearly he has no more fucks to give. Not that a Mormon would give one anyway.) Trump — and those in the GOP who defend him — are a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, its armed forces, its homes and freedom. Here is evidence, all neatly photographed (see the image above) and spelled out in straightforward language. These are the weapons we need to fight them with; let’s start using them. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/6/10/2174634/-Keep-Hitting-Trump-as-a-National-Security-Risk Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/