Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has an assessment of her one-time presidential rival\u2019s administration\u2019s handling of sensitive information: \u201cIt\u2019s just dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinton \u2014 who faced off against President Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016 \u2014 lambasted the Signal group chat that revealed plans for the recent strike in Yemen as dangerous and \u201cdumb.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it\u2019s the stupidity. We\u2019re all shocked \u2014 shocked! \u2014 that President Trump and his team don\u2019t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws,\u201d she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cWhat\u2019s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That\u2019s dangerous. And it\u2019s just dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump focused on Clinton\u2019s handling of sensitive information in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign \u2014 the infamous emails that she sent from a private server while working in the State Department. He threatened investigations and prosecution throughout his first term, and many of the officials involved in the Signal thread had sharply criticized Clinton in the past<\/a>. The Trump administration has blasted Clinton\u2019s emails more aggressively in the wake of Signalgate, arguing that they were a bigger breach<\/a>.<\/p>\n Clinton\u2019s critique of Trump\u2019s second term went beyond just the Signalgate scandal, laying into the administration over the mass firing of federal workers, the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the retreat from global diplomacy, arguing it was weakening the country on the world stage.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump approach is dumb power,\u201d she wrote. \u201cInstead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump\u2019s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.\u201d<\/p>\n Though they faced off years ago, Trump has moved in the last few months to get retribution against his perceived enemies, stripping security clearances and targeting Clinton\u2019s former lawyer as part of his crackdown on Big Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Clinton\u2019s take on Friday homed in on the looming threat of China filling in where U.S. diplomats have retreated, arguing that \u201cforward-deployed diplomacy\u201d is essential to America\u2019s global standing.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won\u2019t save us,\u201d Clinton wrote.<\/p>\n