A new and damning audio recording, aired first on CNN, is shocking to say the least. In it, former President Donald Trump is being interviewed by a writer for a memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff.
Like taking candy from a baby, we can hear while the writer butters him up with easy praise and conspiracy theories to a point where Trump is so titillated he takes out a stack of classified Pentagon documents outlining his administration’s plans to attack Iran.
“These are the papers,” boasts Trump at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, as the classified documents can be heard rustling. “Pages long. Except it is highly confidential, this is secret information,” he acknowledges, after making a crack about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Needless to say, this is a damning piece of evidence in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal criminal indictment of Trump for mishandling classified information — Trump in his own words admitting to and bragging about doing just that.
And all because in a New Yorker article, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley condemned the planned strike and Trump wanted to prove he was right.
This is how alarmingly small a perceived slight has to be for Trump to carelessly jeopardize America’s national security — including the lives of our servicemen and women — merely to soothe his bruised ego. Be damned, America — Trump’s feelings are hurt!
As conservative attorney George Conway put it, “This man has no respect for the rules. No respect for the lives of other human beings. No respect for the country. No respect for the Constitution. No respect for his duties. He’s a sociopathic criminal.”
But we knew this already. For all of his “Make America Great Again” sloganeering, Trump never really cared about the country, its voters, or democracy. America has always been his to pillage, pilfer, and plunder.
After all, this is a man who tried using an angry, armed mob to overturn a democratic election in 2021, which ended in actual violence at the U.S. Capitol. More than 1,000 people — his own supporters — face charges in connection with that insurrection, for doing exactly what he incited them to. After promising to pay for insurrectionists’ legal fees, there’s no evidence he has.
And when that didn’t work he tried using fake electors and phony audits in various states to do it. He tried to pressure the vice president, Georgia’s secretary of state, other Republican officials, the Justice Department and even military officials to help him try. No lever was too sacred to try to pull in order to mitigate Trump’s insecurities and keep his supporters rabid and aggrieved.
During his presidency, he turned America into his personal piggy bank, cafeteria, and garbage can.
Like a boy playing with toy soldiers, he used the military as entertainment, ordering tanks to a July 4th parade in D.C., despite warnings they would damage city roads, because he wanted to outdo France’s Bastille Day parade. “Risking damage to local infrastructure and dumping huge piles of taxpayer money onto the never-ending bonfire of Donald Trump’s vanity,” as one congressman put it.
During the George Floyd protests, Trump used law enforcement like his own personal security staff to tear-gas peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, so he could stage a political photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
He used the office of the presidency to make his businesses more profitable and line his own pockets, and even started using his own voters’ donations as his personal piggy bank to pay off his mounting legal bills.
The parts of America he had little use for, he tossed like a Kleenex onto a landfill. Things like free speech, freedom of the press, entire clauses of the Constitution, checks and balances, separation of powers — none of this mattered to Trump unless it benefited him.
Let’s face it, Trump would probably use the Declaration of Independence to wash his armpits if he felt like it. So who’s all that surprised that Trump believes government secrets and classified documents are his for the taking, to be whipped out casually for strangers to gawk at, to puff himself up and make him feel important?
Who’s shocked that this overly-indulged man-child, who believes women’s genitalia are his for the grabbing, would risk our national security for some cheap thrills?
Who truly can’t fathom Trump’s indifference to the things most of us believe are what make America truly great — the Constitution, democracy, the First Amendment?
The sad truth is, Trump’s always been a taker, a grifter, and a plunderer. And America was his greatest rip-off.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
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