The one thing everyone is overlooking at Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents
There are several potential perils inherent to the haphazard and chaotic way in which Donald Trump ineptly squirrelled away America’s state secrets at Mar-a-Lago. For example, secret documents in the wrong hands can be damaging to America’s allies, giving away their strengths, positions and assets. They can be damaging to world peace, disclosing ways in which a malignant foreign enemy might disrupt delicate balances. They can reveal America’s vital nuclear secrets. They can be dangerous to American assets abroad, placing the lives of human beings and their families in deadly peril.
The reasons for keeping such documents safely secured by the government or, for highly classified documents, in a government SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), are more than arbitrary or theoretical. Such precautions are taken because America’s enemies are many, cunning and relentless.
It goes without saying that Donald Trump cares nothing at all for these considerations. If Trump has shown us anything it’s that he has nothing but high contempt for the safety and comfort of others, including the American people and their security that he swore to protect. In this way Donald Trump isn’t merely the worst president in history, he is one of the worst human beings in history.
But there is one more thing about the whole stolen documents imbroglio that the mainstream media keeps failing to address. Those documents don’t belong to the National Archives, or the FBI, or the White House, or the Congress. They certainly don’t belong to Trump. They belong to us — We the People. When Donald Trump, with so much insouciant entitlement, took documents that didn’t belong to him home with him, he wasn’t stealing from the government, he was ripping off each and every one of us personally. He was making off with our personal property, and I for one am furious about that.
I no longer have my secret clearance, so I am not allowed to examine many of those documents. That doesn’t make them any less mine — or yours. It’s a sacred covenant enshrined in the United States Constitution that the government and all that’s in it is ours, we the people. No longer do monarchs or aristocrats or the wealthy call the shots. That’s the new innovation this new nation brought to the American continent 246 years ago.
So remember that Donald Trump, never tired of being a thief, has stolen from all of us. He stole our health with his flagrant mishandling of the pandemic, he stole our trust with his incessant lies, and now he’s stealing our property. Trump often used to claim that the mainstream media was the enemy of the people. It turns out the enemy of the people was really Trump all along.
I said it earlier in this piece and I say it again and last of all for emphasis: Donald Trump isn’t just the worst president in history, he is one of the worst human beings in history. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.