During last night's ShamWow commercial doubling as the closest thing we'll apparently be getting to a national security discussion, Donald Trump made the peculiar claim that during the first of his classified national security briefings—because he is a major presidential candidate, the government is obligated to provide him with those just in case the nation decides to go with Racist Pumpkin as our new chief executive—that he could tell the intelligence officials briefing him were unhappy with their current president because "I'm pretty good with body language. I could tell they were not happy."
This was followed on the morning shows by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn agreeing with Trump that that happened, except for the body language part, and the revelation that Chris Christie may or may not have spent that same meeting attempting to get a cranky Flynn to, quote, "shut up."
All of this has caused people with actual intelligence—sorry, I mean people from the actual intelligence community—to express alarm at Trump bullshitting in this particular venue.
"A political candidate has used professional intelligence officers briefing him in a totally non-political setting as props to buttress an argument for his political campaign," said [Former CIA chief Michael Hayden]. "And his political point was actually imputed to them, not even something they allegedly said. The `I can read body language' line was quite remarkable. ... I am confident Director Clapper sent senior professionals to this meeting and so I am equally confident that no such body language ever existed. It's simply not what we do."
Donald Trump has already asserted that he is smarter than all the nation's generals, so it should hardly be a surprise that he has superhuman body-language-reading powers able to discern exactly what he wants to see from professionals specifically trained not to betray those thoughts. At this point it wouldn't be surprising if a President Trump also declared himself surgeon general, then started wandering into the nation's operating rooms with a new self-declared mandate to sew four more arms on every patient so that they can be more efficient service workers.
Former acting CIA director Michael Morell (the intelligence services are very partial to people named Michael—it saves a good bit of time when the time comes to repaint the reserved parking spots) was, if anything, harsher:
"This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it's the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties," he said.
One of the more peculiar moments in last night's not-debate was the two proddings from moderator Matt Lauer to Trump that, while Lauer was asking about Trump's security briefings, Trump should remember not to go into "detail." A host having to gently remind a presidential candidate not to leak national security information on national television is a low bar indeed, but even with that Trump was itching to tell how the secret meeting with the secret people was just more evidence that everyone, everywhere secretly agrees with Donald Trump.
They have to keep giving him these briefings, too. I wonder what the "body language" will be like during the next one.