Whac-a-Mole? White House probes leaks on Trump’s calls with foreign leaders
RT.com
10 Feb, 2017
Officials in the White House are looking into leaks about President Donald Trump’s phone calls with foreign heads of state, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling them “very concerning.”
“We’re looking into the situation, yes, and it’s very concerning,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Thursday as quoted by the Hill.
Spicer stressed that the way parts of the information are being revealed “is clearly a breach of a lot of protocols and laws.”
The spokesperson noted that Trump is worried by the leaks, adding that “the idea that you can’t have a conversation without that information getting out is concerning,” Spicer said.
He declined to elaborate on the nature of the investigation. Details of Trump’s phone calls with Putin and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have been leaked in recent days, alongside portions of the conversations with the heads of Mexico and France.
When it came to his call with Putin, Reuters reported that Trump was stumped when the Russian leader asked about extending the 2010 New START arms-reduction treaty, and that the US president had to pause to ask his aides what the agreement was actually about. He then responded by telling Putin the treaty was a series of bad deals negotiated by the previous Obama administration noting that New START includes terms which effectively were in Russia’s favor.
Trump’s opponents were quick to express their discontent with the leader’s apparent lack of knowledge, with Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jeanne Shaheen accusing him of negligence.
“It’s impossible to overstate the negligence of the president of the United States not knowing basic facts about nuclear policy and arms control,” Shaheen said, adding that New START made the US “safer.”
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