Trump's Laughable War on Leaks
Donald Trump has picked a fight no president has or ever will win. At best, it will make him look stupid, at worst, lead to a new Watergate.
JOHN BATCHELOR
02.26.17 12:15 AM ET
Leaks about what now resigned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did or did not convey to Russia Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in a late December phone call not only led to the first administration shakeup but also confirmed that the Washington rules of engagement have not changed after all.
In Washington, the weaponized leak always gets through.
“The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers!” President Trump tweeted before his February 16 press conference to comment on the Flynn fiasco. "They will be caught!” he predicted.
No, they won’t be caught, is what history says, and more: In Washington, the leaks grow like the buckets of water in Walt Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
More worrisome to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, whose job is to command the president’s people, history shows that trying to close off the leaks leads to blame-shifting, low morale, resignations and eventually to political abandonment by Congress.
The outline above is a bloodless diagramming of the infamous Watergate scandal.
Recall that the leak of the infelicitous but not vital Pentagon Papers led to the Nixon Administration’s creating the so-called Plumbers, the sad-sack volunteer burglars led by Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, whose efforts to solve leaks led to a creepy break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in September, 1971 and then to the boneheaded Watergate break-in of June, 1972.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/26/trump-s-laughable-war-on-leaks.html
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