Team Trump didn’t stop at denying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a delegation of members of Congress a military plane to go to Brussels and Afghanistan in retaliation for Pelosi’s call to reschedule the State of the Union. They didn’t stop at raising the threat level of the trip to a war zone by making the plans public. No, they kept going.
Drew Hamill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, tweeted Friday morning that “the delegation was prepared to fly commercially to proceed with this vital trip to meet with our commanders and troops on the front lines,” but then they got a threat assessment from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service showing increased risks because the trip had been made public. But that wasn’t all.
The Trump administration leaked the overall plan in the process of attempting petty payback. Then, after it had been widely pointed out that the trip had been a secret for legitimate security reasons, it leaked Plan B for a commercial flight. This goes way beyond petty retaliation for Pelosi’s SOTU move. This is dangerous vindictiveness.