Is Donald Trump Too Immature For Intelligence?: Opinion

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Is Donald Trump too immature for intelligence?: Opinion

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, next to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP)

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Is Donald Trump too immature for intelligence?: Opinion

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, next to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP)
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On Saturday our four-year-old was with me as I bought my wife a Mother's Day gift.  As we walked into the house, I told her that we weren't going to tell mom what we bought for her, that we would let it be a surprise.  So what does she do?  She marches straight to her mother and says excitedly, "Daddy got you a surprise!"  OK, so she didn't reveal what that surprise was, but who's to say that she wouldn't have if I hadn't told her to stop talking?

Is the president of the United States any better at keeping secrets than my 4-year-old?  That's not a rhetorical question.  Can Donald Trump be trusted with sensitive information?  Do his staffers trust him with such?

We've all, by now, heard the allegations that Trump shared with Russian officials intelligence information that he shouldn't have.  The allegation isn't that Trump didn't have the right - as he tweeted - to share whatever information he chooses to share.  The allegation is that sharing that info wasn't wise, that it wasn't in the best interest of the ally - reportedly Israel - that provided us the information.

In a Tuesday press conference national security adviser H.R. McMaster defended the president, but even his defense is worrisome.  McMaster said Trump could not have told Russian officials whence the intelligence came because he didn't know.  "The president wasn't even aware of where this information came from," McMaster said. "He wasn't briefed on the source."

If that is true, then why not?

Why wasn't the president of the United States told the source of the information? Is it because his staffers can't trust him such information?  Is it because he doesn't have the mental bandwidth to process it?

The same Washington Post story that broke the news that Trump had shared sensitive information with the Russians included this paragraph: "U.S. officials said that the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders, but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points -- and often ignores those."

It's like our intelligence officials have been reduced to writing "Diplomacy for Dummies," and Trump can't even be bothered to handle that.

Earlier this month, the conservative columnist George Will wrote, "It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about Donald Trump's inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence."

In his most recent column in The New York Times, David Brooks argues that Trump is "the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence."  As for the story that he shared with Russia information he shouldn't have, Brooks writes, "From all we know so far, Trump didn't do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a child, desperate for the approval of those he admires. The Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man."

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told CNN, "He is very inexperienced; this is an absolutely new world to him. If I fault him for anything, it's not that he's inexperienced. He doesn't have humility in the face of his inexperience. Here is a president who does not seem to prepare in detail, is a bit disdainful, even contemptuous of the normal processes of government. [He] seems to go into these encounters with, frankly, an unjustified self-confidence in the ability of his person to make these things come out right."

Trump's childishness was apparent during his campaign for the Republican nomination for president and during the general election, so nobody should be surprised now that he is thoughtless, impulsive and unprepared.

But it is still frightening to consider that Trump may have endangered some spies with his loose lips.  Just as it is frightening to think that our intelligence officials didn't share with him some information either because he can't hold it or it's too much for him to mentally handle.

Jarvis DeBerry is deputy opinions editor for NOLA.COM | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at [email protected] or at twitter.com/jarvisdeberry

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