Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Donald Trump speaks with supporters at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, 2016.
We’ve been so overwhelmed by Donald Trump’s constant stream of outrageous, profoundly irresponsible statements that it has become necessary for the sake of one’s sanity not to attend to each one. It is essential, however, to pay attention to his most incendiary statements—because they illustrate precisely how dangerous he is.
At the end of January, for example, Trump promised Nevada voters that there is a “100 percent chance there will be a terrorist attack, so many attacks maybe.”
He seemed to base this on an unsubstantiated claim that “a record number of terrorists” have recently crossed the southern border.
Trump’s fearmongering in Las Vegas hasn’t gotten a lot of attention (although late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel took note of it). Perhaps Trump’s deeply irresponsible prediction about terrorist attacks has gotten lost in the coverage of the $83.3 million jury verdict against Trump in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit, or the more than $350 million judgment against him in a civil fraud case. But Trump’s ramped-up effort to scare Americans into voting for him deserves attention.
Republican members of Congress are pleased to assist Trump’s fearmongering by launching a baseless impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that falsely accused him of “facilitating an invasion.” At the same time, Republican lawmakers have squelched legislation that would have provided resources to help process increased numbers of asylum seekers.
It’s not just that Trump is obviously quite happy to make casual predictions about death and destruction when he thinks it will help him politically. It’s that Trump’s prediction could be an invitation for domestic or foreign terrorists to take an interest in the election, and it is a reminder that Trump, who places his perceived personal interests far above the national interest, is a threat to U.S. security.
Trump has shown in the past that he considers it a point of pride to say that he anticipated terrorist attacks when they happen. After a shooter killed forty-nine people and wounded dozens more at Pulse, an LGTBQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, then-candidate Trump tweeted “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.”
There is, of course, something sociopathic about trying to score political points when nearly fifty people had died. But there is another layer of horror here. It’s not just that Trump sees deadly terrorist attacks as an opportunity to preen and pretend he had some special insight when, in fact, anyone can make a general prediction about future terrorism that appears to be confirmed when an attack takes place. Trump either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care that, by predicting terrorist attacks, he may be creating a perverse incentive for such attacks to be attempted.
It’s also important to make clear that this is part of a broader pattern. We already know that Trump is a danger to national security in other ways. In 2017, “Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting,” The Washington Post reported at the time, noting that the “disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.”
This came just months after Trump’s election in 2016, following a campaign in which he claimed that Hillary Clinton was unqualified to be President because she had improperly handled classified information. But beyond being hypocritical, Trump’s disclosure of classified information to Russian diplomats was also dangerous. The United States reportedly had to extract a top spy from Russia afterward. Of course, Trump’s cavalier attitude toward national secrets was revealed again when he allegedly took classified documents from the White House after leaving office, refused to return them to the government, and attempted to conceal the documents.
I hope that Trump’s wildly reckless “predictions” about terrorist attacks do not, in fact, increase the chances that any attacks will be attempted. What is clear, however, is that Trump has an utter disregard for national security. This is a man who has shown, time and time again, that he is simply not qualified to hold a position of public trust.