This picture tells a story. It’s President Donald Trump at dinner with the Japanese prime minister after news was received of a North Korean missile test.
Guests at the swanky dinner watched as discussions were held about a national security issue and posted about it on social media. The photos included these showing many mobile phones being used to illuminate the table — phones that easily could be broadcasting words and images to unknown places around the world.
Charles Pierce gets right to the point in a comment on the amazing scene:
This is just the most amazing picture ever. The classified information on the screen of an open cellphone. The aides using the flashlights of their own phones to help the president*—and the waitstaff—read the classified material. Shinzo Abe sitting there and wondering what he’s gotten himself into.
Every editor who assigned a story about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s secret server and the e-mails should immediately consider moving to a monastery on a mountainside in Albania and engage in ritual purification of the body until they get further instructions.
The Washington Post reported on the crazy evening. Among other things, Trump dragged Abe to be photographed with a guest because they’d given Trump so much money. And one party goer got a picture with a smiling fellow who carries the nuclear football.
House Republicans vow to carry on with examinations of Clinton’s e-mail server. Mike Flynn’s meeting with Russians; sloppy handling of the nuclear football; pay to play with the Japanese leader? That’s just Trump.
But the e-mails? Now there is a scandal for sure. If only the digging can continue.