The left is up in arms after President Donald Trump tweeted a satellite image of an Iranian launch site.
Trump shared the image Friday, prompting the usual hand-wringing alarmism on the left that Trump is endangering national security with his tweets. Critics noted that the image was classified and might betray information about America’s spying capabilities.
However, the notion that Americans’ lives were somehow placed at risk over Trump’s tweet is a stretch, to say the least. Like so many exaggerated controversies before it, the left is almost certainly blowing this controversy out of proportion.
Trump prompts leftist ire
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been high ever since President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, which sought to place limitations on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In recent weeks, Iran has over-shot the limitations placed on its uranium stockpiles as laid out in the defunct agreement.
Like he has often done, Trump sought to rattle his rival Friday with a bit of humor, according to Fox News. In a tweet, the president taunted Iran over a failed rocket launch last week, while insisting that America was not involved.
The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One. pic.twitter.com/z0iDj2L0Y3
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019
But the tweet quickly became the center of a fresh anti-Trump outrage, as it became apparent that Trump might have shared an image from a U.S. spy satellite or drone. An official told CNBC that Trump had shared an image from a classified intelligence briefing with the president.
But Trump insisted on his right to share the photo Friday. “We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do,” Trump said.
Citing national security “experts,” the left raised a panic that Trump was risking exposing intelligence secrets. “Experts fear Trump revealed U.S. secrets when he tweeted a photo of an Iranian nuclear site,” read one headline from liberal site Vox. Other “experts” said the tweet disclosed spying capabilities to American adversaries, with one official telling CNBC that Trump’s tweet will have “global repercussions.”
Liberals raise manufactured panic
As president, Trump has the right to declassify classified material when he wants. Naturally, liberals have long fretted over the implications of Trump’s presidential power, but their predictions that Trump would press the “big red button” and destroy the world have failed to materialize.
Indeed, the reaction to Trump’s tweet falls within a now predictable vein: the left has long claimed that Trump is recklessly departing from the so-called “expert” consensus on governance. For example, the left has reacted to Trump’s still-dormant efforts to withdraw from wars in Syria and Afghanistan, citing “experts” who say it would put American lives at risk to disengage from costly wars.
Amid all the nonsense, it has become difficult to distinguish legitimate criticism of Trump’s decisions from the endless morass of alarmism generated by the media. Some of the “experts” lauded by the left include James Comey, who was excoriated last week for setting a “dangerous example” by leaking and keeping memos of conversations with Trump that contained sensitive information.
In a follow-up tweet Saturday, Trump bashed his critics for deferring to the same “failed” experts who put America in the mess Trump was elected to fix, The Hill reports.
“Being scolded by failed former ‘Intelligence’ officials, like James Clapper, on my condolences to Iran on their failed [r]ocket launch. Sadly for the United States, guys like him, Comey, and the even dumber John Brennan, don’t have a clue. They really set our [c]ountry back,” Trump wrote, “but now we are moving forward like never before. We are winning again, and we are respected again!”
No comments: