Have you ever heard the saying, "Loose lips sink ships"?
Donald Trump has a lot of bad qualities.
But loquaciousness might be among his worst.
A president must possess an enormous degree of restraint with sensitive information.
One slip up can send the stock market reeling--or worse.
So, when a president stands before the nation to announce a secret U.S. military operation intended to eliminate a key ISIS figure has been successful, we should assume that president is not only being honest, but revealing solely appropriate information the American public--and the world--require lest he compromise pending operations and intelligence information.
Nothing more.
That's what a president would do.
Not Donald Trump.
Trump's Sunday morning announcement of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death was a big deal.
Yet Trump's inability to stick to the script revealed sensitive information that could risk imperiling future raids, special operations, and intelligence.
During his 48-minute speech (in which he characterized watching the raid "as though you were watching a movie") replete with spin and hyperbole, Trump described how the Army Delta Force chased al-Baghdadi through a tunnel network, culminating in his immolating himself and his three children with a suicide vest.
But then it got weird.
Retired Army lieutenant general and the former senior special operations Middle East commander during the incipient anti-ISIS campaign, Michael Nagata, criticized the president's account:
"I always get a little bit nervous when people without knowledge of operations start describing operations. It's a good story, and I can understand the impulse to tell a good story. Telling it can have positive benefits. But the benefits are unpredictable and marginal, whereas the harm could be more substantial."
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