Teresa Hanafin writes “Fast Forward” for the Boston Globe, where this appeared. I love her writing.

 

Trump has no public events on his schedule today, probably clearing the decks so he and his toadies can figure out how to explain away a troubling revelation by The Washington Post: This summer, during communications with a foreign leader — one US official said it was a phone call — Trump made a promise to that foreign leader that was so disturbing that an official in the US intelligence community filed a formal whistleblower report with the community’s inspector general.

That inspector general, Michael Atkinson, concluded that the report was credible and Trump’s conversation was a matter of “urgent concern,” a level of threat that requires intelligence officials to notify Congress — specifically, the oversight committees — within seven days.

Atkinson turned the complaint over to his boss, the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, who read the details and then refused to turn them over to Congress — apparently deciding that breaking the law to protect Dear Leader was far more important than protecting the country.

Atkinson, the IG, is testifying this morning before the House Intelligence Committee in a classified session closed to the public.

This is hardly the first time that the largemouth bass in the Oval Office has endangered national security. As recently as last October, he was using an unsecured iPhone to chit-chat with Lord knows who, calls that the Chinese and Russians eavesdropped on, freaking out intelligence officials who kept telling Trump to please knock it off.

And you may recall when the blunderbuss told two top Russian officials in the Oval Office about a top-secret intelligence operation in Syria, compromising the Israeli spy involved. And CNN reported that US intelligence officials were so worried about Trump’s loose lips that they yanked a valuable, high-level US spy out of Moscow.

And just yesterday, he screwed up again, revealing that the replacement steel fence being erected at the Mexican border is wired with sensors to detect climbers. That prompted Lieutenant General Todd Semonite, acting head of the Army Corps, to basically tell Trump to zip it: “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that.”

Trump also claimed that the wall was so hot, making it impossible to climb, that you could “fry an egg” on it. He then went over and touched the wall, signing it with a Sharpie. Nothing went up in smoke.