President Donald Trump has again proved himself to be Blabbermouth In Chief.
First, he gave info that let slip the identity of a vital U.S. intelligence source. Then, while in Israel, he said he never identified the country Israel. Now, according to Buzzfeed, he told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte about the presence of U.S. nuclear submarines near North Korea. How long before he tells someone about the code to that cool football with those buttons than launch a military ship.
Pentagon officials are in shock after the release of a transcript between President Donald Trump and his Philippines counterpart reveals that the US military had moved two nuclear submarines towards North Korea
“We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military’s belief that keeping submarines’ movement stealth is key to their mission.
While the US military will frequently announce the deployment of aircraft carriers, it is far more careful when discussing the movement of nuclear submarines. Carriers are hard to miss, and that in part, is a reason the US military deploys them. They are a physical show of forces. Submarines are, at times, a furtive complement to the carriers, a hard-to-detect means of strategic deterrence.
According to a transcript of the call, released Wednesday, Trump called Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte April 29 to discuss, in part, the rising threat from North Korea. During that call, while discussing ways to mitigate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, Trump said: “We have two submarines – the best in the world – we have two nuclear submarines – not that we want to use them at all. I’ve never seen anything like they are but we don’t have to use this but [Kim] could be crazy so we will see what happens.”
During the same call, Trump also called the North Korea leader a “madman with nuclear weapons” and celebrated Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem,” even as the Filipino leader has supported the alleged extrajudicial killing of 8,000 people since taking office in June, part of his purge to rid his nation of drugs. Duterte has bragged about committing murder himself, called former President Barack Obama a “son of a bitch” and once threatened to suspend the bilateral agreement between his nation and the United States that allows US troops to visit the Philippines.
“Keep up [the] good work, you are doing an amazing job,” Trump told Duterte during the call.
What’s the significance?
By announcing the presence of nuclear submarines, the president, some Pentagon officials privately explained, gives away the element of surprise — an irony given his repeated declarations during the campaign that the US announces far too many of its military plans when it comes to combatting ISIS.
Trump uses the copyrighted slogan Make America Great Again” or MAGA.
His slogan should be MAV: “Make America Vulnerable.”
None of this will endear him (which he is not at this point anyway) to the military or intelligence community. Apart from declaring war early in his term on the CIA, FBI etc, and wanting to slash funding for diplomacy, he is now showing himself a serial bigmouth when it comes to security.
How long before they present Trump with information they know won’t hurt the US is leaked, and keep other info from him?
If they’re not smart enough to have started doing that that already.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.