Trump's refusal to wear a mask, and downplaying of the dangers of COVID-19 has not only placed his life in danger and the lives of the sycophants who bend to his every whim... (see all of our posts for the lengthening COVID count connected to the Rose Garden announcement of Nurse Ratched Amy Coney Barrett as SCOTUS nominee, and Trump's debate prep team.) Honestly, as far as I am concerned, I hope they all suffer.
Trump's reckless endangerment, though, also places our national security in an even MORE precarious position. Former Senior Adviser to the National Security Adviser, Samantha Vinograd, is furious about it, as she expressed to CNN's Ana Cabrera.
VINOGRAD: Ana, even before
this Conley kerfuffle, the entire White House timeline was full of holes. I've been on air force one where Hope Hicks was reportedly quarantined on Wednesday evening. Senior aides like Hope Hicks sit in special cabins close to the president. It is unlikely that the president didn't notice when Hope Hicks was quarantined, and standard operating procedure would be, once Hope was quarantined, for the Chief of Staff to immediately alert the president about a credible threat to his well-being. The same holds true for Thursday morning. Once Hope Hicks got a positive diagnosis back, a reasonable step would be for the Chief of Staff again to alert the president about a credible threat to his well-being. That's just standard operating procedure, because the safety of the president is paramount. Of course, you also don't want the president walking around spreading contagion among the American people.
The more reasonable explanation here is that the president DID know that he could pose a risk to others, and chose to go about his political schedule. And honestly, Ana, this is the angriest I've ever been on television. The idea that White House personnel knew that the president could endanger the health and security of Americans, and sent him out there as a contagion risk is really unacceptable.
An infuriated Vinograd went on to outline the worst case scenarios from a national security standpoint, now that so many of Trump's people are also quarantined and/or diagnosed.
VINOGRAD: Well, on an operational level we haven't contained the threat within the national security apparatus. That means that there is a health risk to national security personnel while contact tracing and testing is under way. In addition to the physical risks, there are also risks to the functionality of our national security process. I say this from experience. It takes all that a healthy person has to fully discharge their duties as a senior level when it comes to national security and the president's compromised status raises real questions about whether he can make timely and important decisions about national security. In addition to the president, other personnel that are quarantining don't have regular access to things like classified servers. They're not able to routinely engage with colleagues, which means that they are not able to go about business as usual. Critical resources are being redirected to focus on this current crisis, which means that other balls could be dropped. There are a lot of vulnerabilities right now and that means that this is a perfect storm for maligned actors of all shapes and sizes.
Honestly, though, when has Trump ever cared about our nation's security?
