We begin today’s roundup with Colbert King’s take on Donald Trump retaliating against his critics by threatening to revoke their security clearances:
Yes, this plan to revoke security clearances comes from someone who, if he weren’t president, likely couldn’t get a security clearance if he tried. [...] I know something about that having served with the U.S. Civil Service Commission (the precursor to the Office of Personnel Management) as an investigator and with the State Department as a special agent domestically and regional security officer overseas. I conducted hundreds of background investigations. There’s so much about Trump that would raise security concerns if he were an off-the-street federal job applicant. (I first addressed Trump’s security clearance issues in a February 2017 column.) People with associations with foreign interests, especially large business, financial or property interests in foreign countries or with foreign-owned businesses, would get close scrutiny. That’s particularly true if those associations might subject them to a risk of foreign influence or exploitation. Enter Trump and the Trump Organization’s business relationships in countries known to target U.S. citizens to try to gain access to protected or privileged information — e.g., Russia.
Here’s Aaron Blake’s take at The Fix:
Trump really doesn't have a leg to stand on. For months during the 2016 campaign, Michael Flynn was one of his lead surrogates, even leading a chant of "Lock her up" during the Republican National Convention. If it was wrong to be political while having a security clearance, Trump sure didn't seem to speak up about Flynn or ask him to tone it down. In fact, he hired Flynn despite the White House knowing that Flynn was under investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey. So Flynn was allegedly "monetizing" and "politicizing" his past position, and Trump's impulse was to promote him rather than punish him.
But that's also the point. Trump isn't concerned about people making political statements; he's worried about them making the wrong ones. Most of the people on this list aren't partisans. They present problems precisely because they're mostly not, and yet they're still taking the highly unusual steps of speaking out. So the White House must make them into political actors. That's what Monday's spectacle was about.