Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:16 pm
Appearing Wednesday on CNN’s At This Hour with Berman and Bolduan, David Gregory reacted to Donald Trump’s request of Putin that he hack Hillary Clinton by saying of the former reality star,
“It’s as if this is a child playing with matches who doesn’t understand how badly he and the country can get burned.”
And yes, this is really happening. Just to enshrine this moment in history, let’s look at exactly what Trump has done, courtesy of NBC Nightly News editor Bradd Jaffy:
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What a time to be alive pic.twitter.com/loIz0Bmqpq
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 27, 2016
Then watch David Gregory’s reaction courtesy of Media Matters for America:
JOHN BERMAN (CO-HOST): It is unusual, which is a charitable way of putting it, for a presidential candidate to call on the intelligence services of another nation to hack into American government emails, but that’s what Donald Trump just did.
DAVID GREGORY: I’ve run out of words to express my shock and how completely beyond the pale that Donald Trump is as a potential leader of the free world, the commander in chief of our country. This was truly beyond the pale. I mean, he is encouraging Russia, which by all accounts was behind the leak of one of our major political parties, to do more, to go beyond, to try to hack into Hillary Clinton’s server to find missing emails to kind of get in the middle of the scandal. It’s as if this is a child playing with matches who doesn’t understand how badly he and the country can get burned. It’s a very serious thing. And I think that the one thing about Trump is that he is very clear for all to see. He is making very clear what he thinks, how he comes by information, and I think, frankly, the lack of seriousness and the intemperance with which he speaks about important national security matters should certainly give people pause. And I don’t think there’s anybody who would think that was anything but a fair reading of what we’ve seen here. Vladimir Putin is dangerous. He’s been dangerous to a Democratic president, to a Republican president, President George W. Bush who thought he had a better relationship with him. And now this nominee of the Republican Party wants a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin which is what he said. And he thinks that he has the ability to have a better relationship. There’s no evidence to believe that’s the case.
David Gregory is right. Donald Trump is reckless in word and deed, and a danger to America. Far from making it stronger, he invites our enemies to attack us out of sheer small-minded petulance.
Trump has already lost many Republicans who see him as unstable, with lifelong Republican Daniel Piper referring to “Trump’s boorish, selfish, puerile, and repulsive character, combined with his prideful ignorance [and] his off-the-cuff policy making.”
This is just the latest example of what can only be described as a severe character flaw in Donald Trump. In the wake of allegations that his personal and financial ties to the Russian strongman are too close and the recent Russian hacking of the DNC, this was a horrible mistake on his part.
It will only fan the flames, serving to increase awareness in voters that Donald Trump is not stable enough an individual to occupy the highest office in the land.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
