U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner is “outraged” with President Donald Trump‘s and his administration’s treatment and ignorance of national security.
No one has been held responsible for Signalgate, a March incident in which several senior administration members shared classified information over the app Signal, and accidentally included a journalist.
“What that does to morale of the military and the IC (intelligence community), because they know if it had been a military officer or a CIA officer who treated this classified information so sloppily, they’d be fired,” Warner said in a call with Virginia press Wednesday afternoon.
Trump’s and his administration’s antics are also “seriously deteriorating even further our alliances,” because foreign countries will not be able to trust American intelligence officials with their secrets for fear of them getting into the wrong hands.
“If it doesn’t scare the heck out of you, it should,” Warner said of the firing of top personnel such as Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield and Director of National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command Gen. Timothy Haugh.
Amid a full-fledged trade war, before Trump reversed tariffs later in the afternoon except for China, Warner said that a tariff on China could encourage the Communist nation to use TikTok against America.
According to Warner, 80 percent of lawmakers, including Republicans and Democrats, voted not to ban TikTok from Americans, but to ensure the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not have control of the social media app.
“The president disobeyed the law when he first said we’re going to give [TikTok] a 75 day extension [before banishing],” Warner said of Trump’s executive order upon entering office in January one day after a national ban, signed into law in April 2024 by former President Joe Biden, was set to take effect.
Warner said that another 75-day delay to ban TikTok would be “way beyond the intent of Congress.”
“If the algorithm remains in Beijing, the whole deal structure is a sham,” Warner said of TikTok’s ownership by Chinese-based parent company ByteDance. “That’s what Congress knew and that’s why we passed this legislation.”
Ironically, Trump raised concerns with TikTok during his first term as president.
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Rebecca Barnabi
