So we are led to this day’s NY Times mainstreaming of Trump criminality, Trump’s Tastes in Intelligence: Power and Leverage . And you see right away where they’re going. Trump stealing and hiding Top Secret documents crucial to United States security, and obstructing their return, and doing who knows what else, has now become a matter of “taste”. Indeed:
Mr. Trump’s appetite for sensitive information is now at the heart of the criminal investigation into his handling of hundreds of classified documents he kept at his Florida home after leaving office.
The man simply has a Rabelaisian appetite for “sensitive information”. Wouldn’t we all in that situation? Is that really a crime? Perhaps he was spending his time reading about Kim Jung Un’s mistresses or threesomes with Emmanuel Macron (I just made all that up BTW). After all:
Mr. Trump … was fascinated by what the C.I.A. had learned about his international counterparts’ supposed extramarital affairs — not because he was going to confront them with the information, former officials said, but rather because he found it titillating.
And who can blame him for “blurting out secret information” or that time “he posted to Twitter a photo of an Iranian missile launch site taken from an intelligence briefing.” Did he endanger lives, did he compromise crucial technological capabilities? Oh, not a word about that part. It was just cool stuff he couldn’t help doing.
Mr. Trump did not have the same appreciation of the sensitivity of intelligence as Mr. Bush, whose father, George H.W. Bush, served not only as president but also, earlier in his career, as C.I.A. director.
Well, there you go. How would you expect Trump to appreciate “the sensitivity of intelligence” without the pedigree of younger Bush. It’s like being able to appreciate French Impressionism at the Met — an acquired taste that not everyone will have. But is it a crime? (not that we would even ask)
All in all:
Mr. Trump never took the need to protect such material seriously.
The man was simply a careless roue, debauched in intelligence information. We don’t wish to judge or to conclude — NY Times standards, of course, and besides the deplorables may lay siege to the building at any minute — and while we don’t necessarily approve, people’s tastes and proclivities will differ, yes?
Your paper of record.