At least Benedict Arnold fought the British during the revolutionary war and later became a turncoat in 1780 and has gone in history as the treasonous patriot who betrayed his country.
By contrast, Donald Trump was a draft dodger and his loyalty to the USA is to be doubted. Even before he became President as some say Vladimir Putin had Trump over a barrel. Given the Trump Administration and sequel to losing the 2019 election, one can conclude that Trump’s loyalty was…to himself.
Early during his presidency in July 2017, Trump dismissed his US translator in a four-eye meeting with Putin in the margins of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg when it is customary that both sides have a translator/scribe. No other head of state would do what Trump did. So we will never know what was discussed between them (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/world/europe/trump-putin-undisclosed-meeting.html).
This action, plus Trump’s continual support or downplaying the nefarious deeds of Putin’s Russia makes the rest of the free world wonder if Trump was up to the job of being leader of the free world.
During my service with the Australian government I had a top secret security clearance and would time to time have access to the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement on a range of matters. The data collection of our respective secret service agencies was shared, except for AUSTEO (Australian Eyes Only),Russ and the other countries had the same arrangements.
It is shocking that Trump has misused these shared secrets.
Theoretically as outgoing American President he could possibly declassify American sourced secrets (to be tested in the US courts) but he could never declassify secrets that were sourced from the other four countries involved in this intelligence sharing arrangement.
Now it transpires a classified document sourced from Australia was allegedly found unsecured at Mar-A-Lago (https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/aussie-link-to-secret-file-found-at-trumps-resort/news-story/e536bd22580722b873747338d85ebd67).
All these actions only serve the interests of Russia and the enemies of the US, and at the detriment of the democratically elected countries of the free world.
The attack on the US Congress on January 6 2020 is a harbinger of what is to come if Trump is not stopped from fomenting civil war in America.
Phil na Champassak is an entrepreneur and owns The Madsen Boutique Hotel in Penguin. He is a founding board member of Switch Tasmania (formerly the Cradle Coast Innovation Inc) and formerly a board director of the Cradle Coast Tourism Executive, the regional tourism organisation for NW Tasmania. He was also a diplomat and DFAT policy analyst, working on trade, aid, public diplomacy, consular, international security, and bilateral relations with PNG, the US, and NZ. Prior to that he worked for the UN Development Programme in New York, West Africa and PNG. Phil na Champassak also served as election monitor to the first elections in Cambodia (1992) and South Africa (1994) and was a peace monitor in Bougainville (2002). He has contributed to publications on human rights, election monitoring, and UN issues. He was awarded an Australian Service Medal in 2003.
PHIL NA CHAMPASSAK: The Fake President.
