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COMMENTARY DAVID FRUM ... MARCH 27, 2025 The Hub Canada: Trump faces his first national security scandal as messaging app blows up PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWuXUapkr6E Peter Burgess COMMENTARY DUMB! The 'dumbness' pf the people who are in the Trump administrations is quite incredible ... but that is the reality. I have been 'unimpressed' with Donald Trump for more than 30 years ... but the idea that he has suprrounded himself with an administration that is even dumber than himself is a pretty amazing feat. Sadly ... a lot of Americans do not 'get it' that Trump has no interest whatsoever in anything but geting benefit for himself Peter Burgess
David Frum: Trump faces his first national security scandal as messaging app blows up The Hub Canada Mar 27, 2025 48.6K subscribers ... 275,631 views ... 5.3K likes In Conversation with David Frum Leading author, journalist and thinker David Frum and The Hub's editor-at-large Sean Speer discuss the group chat intelligence breach involving senior Trump administration officials and its fallout. He also covers Canada's ongoing election campaign amid the imminent tariff threats from President Trump and how Canadians media and politicians ought to handle Trump’s intrusions into the campaign. If you liked what you watched, please consider becoming a Hub Hero (https://thehub.ca/join/hero/). Hub Heroes also gets our premium paid newsletters featuring our best insight and analysis along with all our paid content on The Hub.ca. All these benefits are conferred for one year. Sign up now! Explore the podcast 78 episodes In Conversation with David Frum The Hub Canada Transcript 0:00 welcome to in conversation with David from I'm your host Sean spear editor at large at the Hub I'm grateful to be back in conversation with David for another installment of our bi-weekly video and podcast series on the key issues concerning Canadian policy and politics and today's conversation we'll discuss Canada's ongoing election campaign the imminent threat of tariffs from the Trump Administration and how more generally Canadian media parties and and voters themselves ought to be thinking about Donald Trump and and threats to the country in the context of of a campaign David thanks as always for joining me thank you uh before we get to the campaign David I have to ask about what is a fast-moving story from your publication the Atlantic uh in which a series of senior security officials within the Trump Administration including the defense secretary the Secretary of State the and the vice president uh were exchanging on a on a private what appeared to be a private uh 1:00 web chat uh in which they inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic and in so doing disclosed to him extraordinary details about uh what turned out to be a a military campaign uh in the Middle East why don't you just reflect on on the story as we understand it to date and and what it tells us about the Trump Administration uh it's competence uh uh and its recklessness um so it needs to be stressed the Atlantic is a very responsible publication that that with a strong commitment to the ideals of America and to American National Security so when this story originally fell into Jeffrey Goldberg's lap and it fell he did not go seek it it came to him when the story came to him he went out of his way and the Atlantic collectively went out of its way to safeguard American National Security interests the bombing campaign happened on May uh March 15th Jeffrey had the story March 15 but he took a week to publish it because first he wanted to confirm that it was true and second he wanted to to check with both Atlantic 2:02 internal lawyers and outside experts that nothing would be betrayed that was important to the security of the United States there was a named CIA agent on the chat CIA agent named by the boss um yes uh that was redacted and all the details including details that we didn't at the Atlantic know exactly how they might be useful to an enemy but assuming that they might be useful to an enemy in ways we couldn't understand again details were rid acted um in order to say look here's what happened no one needs to know the precise nature of the breach from our point of view um and the Trump administration's response was to say uh what must have happened is you must have sneakily infiltrated the chat and by the way none of the information was important none of it was classified you're lying about what you reported and not only that we are going to testify to Congress two of us three of us uh the head of CIA the Director of National Intelligence and the head of the FBI testified to Congress none of this information was classified the White 3:00 House Press Secretary said none of this information was classified the president said none of this information was classified the National Security adviser went on television and said none of this information was classified the Secretary of Defense who blurted the whole thing said none of it was classified I know what I'm doing uh these are liars and they would and the Atlantic then said okay well in that case we ask you Jeff called this morning or called yesterday said we ask would you object if we publish the information and although there was a little grumbling they had since they' insisted they said well we don't recommend it but I guess we it's not classified the Atlantic still continue to redact the name of the CIA officer because that would put somebody's career in even Security in in danger but the rest with explicit permission from the information from the administration was printed and obviously they were lying and lying and lying and lying and they put Pilots lives at risk you say two hours in advance of a bombing Mission here are the planes that are going here's when they will be over the target 4:00 here's when they will here's the minute at which they will be over the Target in an insecure form um on devices personal devices uh the device held by um the Trump's Russia enoy was certainly he was in Moscow with using his personal phone the Russians certainly read that chat if they wanted to share the information with the houthis they could have possibly the Iranians had had access to that information they could have shared the information Pilots could be dead the mission could have failed all because because the secretary of defense was a blabbermouth and and the 18 people had no regard for the basic rules of National Security don't discuss secret information on personal phones as is so often the case uh the cover up is As oftentimes as bad as the crime we'll come to the cover up in in a minute but I I just have to ask is someone uh who's worked in a white house uh who has uh exercise great integrity when it comes to dealing with these types of classified documents and classified 5:02 materials why don't you just reflect on for our audience that may not be familiar with these types of issues the significance of this breach the significance of disclosing this type of information uh to a civilian look I I was a a speech writer involved with principally economic and trade issues I never saw anything remotely as sensitive as this uh but I know that when people did have to deal with it they went to particular rooms they were particularly secured um uh I've continued to visit white houses um uh since those days and every time I visited a White House your phone is collected before you enter the meeting room and put inside a special box it looks it looks like it's metal but obviously it's nine kinds of polymer um the phone is is locked away and you do not have access to the phone anytime you anywhere in the vicinity of of any national secret so the idea that you're Tech you're actually not only carrying the phone with you into a secure facility but actually putting the information on the phone um every person 6:02 should assume that you your phone is compromised in in the age of AI and mass downloads not that anyone not that anyone in China is particularly listening to you but every key stroke is being recorded somewhere and fed into some large intelligence model you that's that's a fact of Modern Life and people who are trusted with the National Security of the United States know that they've been briefed on it and if they've chosen to disregard it or if um they don't care what a what a terrible reflection of their lack of regard for for Duty and for the lives of the people who report to them and by the way this Administration has fiercely punished lower Echelon employees for much lesser breaches those people have dozens of people have been punished by this Administration for lower level breaches and um the message of the Trump Administration has always been accountability for M uh underlings but not for the people at the top uh in the original article reporting on these 7:00 extraordinary details um Jeff Goldberg as you say laid out pretty comprehensively uh within the confines of of the law of what he had heard and seen uh as as as an inadvertent participant in this exchange um the the natural response it seems to me from from people like Michael Walls and others would have been to fess up to essentially ex concede that they had made a m mistake uh that they would subject themselves to the the decision of the president on whether they ought to remain in their role or not but they had been for all intents and purposes David caught guilty and instead as you say um they they pushed back they resisted they they asserted that 2 plus 2 equals 5 and and this morning March 26 the Atlantic is has called their Bluff talk a bit about that the instinct to react that way and the consequences for some of the people involved in your mind well there's a combination here of I mean comically there's a large element 8:00 of stupidity and incompetence but not so comically there's a large element of threat and intimidation because they were gambling that they could muscle the Atlantic into not publishing anymore um and given their success at intimidating the Los Angeles Times The Washington Post um at extracting payments from the parent organizations of ABC News and CBS um I think there there's a PA Paul Weiss the law firm here in New York City there's a part of that says just apply a little muscle and people will break and you can get away with illegal activity and you can get away with lying about ille activity by threatening consequences and extracting and and relying on fear as your method of government um and I will say something with the corporate culture of the Atlantic uh we're all the Atlantic was founded before the American Civil War it was originally founded as an intellectual journal for the people who um argued the union cause during the Civil War it was in the Atlantic that the battle hym of the Republic was originally published as a poem 9:00 and one of the things we all have in our corporate culture is this thing's been going on since 1857 are you going to be the one to screw it up I youd better not be the one to screw it up and by the way the Atlantic has reported often on Military affairs from many people who have served in the military um many people Jeff Goldberg himself was a was a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces there's an understanding of military imperatives and sympathy for them um and uh and many people of a company they they understand what it must feel like to be a pilot whose life has been put in danger because your boss blabbed in an insecure format Vital Information two hours before you were to be over a Target and let's transition uh from this extraordinary exchange uh to the Canadian election through JD Vance's forthcoming trip to Greenland uh in in what he which he announced yesterday as part of his announcement David he said that it was crucial to go um in part to protect the security of Canada uh which I suspect will surprise some of 10:01 our listeners and viewers what are we to make of the ongoing agitation uh towards Greenland is there reason to think that the administration's expansionary Ambitions uh with regards to Greenland are sincere well as anyone who's played Risk knows after you get Quebec Ontario and the Northwest Territories you must acquire Greenland to secure the board or otherwise you will forfeit six armies or is it five armies a turn so so that's just basic strategy where they they learn of the Trump they they take out the big risk map um an extraordinary thing happened to that projected trip so the original idea was that the vice president's wife and one of their children was to go to Greenland to take part in a dog race and one of two things is true either they imagined that there would be some outpouring of enthusiasm for her uh that would justify uh you know little American little children waving American flags want to join the 11:00 United States second lady um or I think I have suspected more Darkly they were hoping for some kind of incident that they could then magnify into a demand for an apology from Greenland demand for an apology from Denmark and then begin to muscle up some kind of campaign of intimidation when the apology was of course not to their liking uh what happened instead and and they took over a hotel in the main town in Greenland they flew up um uh Secret Service vehicles for the second lady's party at enormous expense uh the sponsors of the dog race the Greenland government said we didn't invite you the Danish government said we didn't invite you and the sponsors of the dog race said you're not welcome and we don't have any tickets for you uh and at that point they changed the plan that instead of going to the main town in Greenland to watch the dog race that they would go to an American Air Force Base in Northwestern Greenland where the the the vice president of the and his wife could visit as of right um and that uh and that is the they change a plan 12:00 that me they abandoned the hope they would be greeted warmly they abandoned plans if they had them for the provocation which I worried about um in that sense uh the signal Scandal may have saved Greenland for the greenlanders that uh because if there were plans to do something nefarious uh those plans are now going to be suspended um let's turn the conversation to Canada we we as you know David had been in the midst of election campaign for a few days now uh for those of us who were anticipating that U the Trump administration's threats to Canada both economically and geopolitically would Loom over the campaign thus far anyway the focus has been principally pocketbook issues we've had competing tax cuts proposals to today for instance Pier PV has um a target a targeted policy for uh seniors and their household budgets um that said next week in the middle of the campaign we're going to have an announcement of the Trump Administration uh ostensibly about 13:00 tariffs that could be a defining moment in this election campaign uh why don't you just uh reflect a bit on next week's announcement uh what you may what we may anticipate and how it may influence the campaign in your mind well first I want to say something about the background context in Canadian politics so 5 10 15 years ago an observer of Canadian politics might have said you know Canadian politics um it's not very it's not proper politics you have a very nonpartisan electorate that can flow 20 points this way 20 points that way you have parties that are routine that stand for nothing that could take each other's ideas um uh that often everyone seems to be saying more or less the same thing at any given moment uh you know Canada is not a properly polar properly um responsible political system like the United States and Great Britain I think at this point everyone you know maybe that was a good thing I the idea that you have these these 20o movements that 14:00 that the parties accusing each other of stealing their most popular ideas I mean isn't that kind of what you want from your government is if the opposition opposition comes up with a popular idea instead of saying no never we will go down with the ship why don't why don't we steal it people people don't want to pay HST on the first billion dollars of house the that wasn't our idea but you know what people like it let's take it and let's do it and from the party's point of view it makes life frustrating and difficult but from the voters and citizens point of view think oh well we don't have to wait for a change of government to get this popular idea executed the government of the day will steal the popular idea from the opposition um I I remember I remember um a friend of mine commenting on an Ontario provincial election a long time ago he said we have the most committed voters of any of the three major parties in this election no more than half of them would desert us on 24 hours notice so I think a lot what we're seeing here is a testament to to the essentially non-ideological 15:02 nonpartisan Cent grounded Centrist attitude of the Canadian voter and I think looking at politics around the world that comes as a little bit of a relief and if the voters can swing 20 points away from one party to another and and then swing back they could do it a third time too so this election is very dram Canadian elections can be very dramatic because the elections matter the campaigns matter the arguments matter the demeanor and behavior of the candidates matter um but I think we can say the Canadian voter looks like a pretty levelheaded person yes although I would say David that that median voter you're talking about has according to a lot of pools been agitated uh ever since Donald Trump first uh threatened tffs in late November and and started talking about annexing the country in in January a level-headed person does not worry that there might be ghosts in the basement but a level-headed person person does worry when the president of 16:01 the most powerful military establishment in the world which happens to be right next door says we think of invading and conquering your country and says it again and again yeah that is a legitimate thing to worry about and of course um when April 2nd comes if Trump makes good uh that will likely have dramatic effect but what um what you're seeing that it again testifies I mean there are a few flamboyant personalities who have thrown in their cause with Trump um seeking I think social media attention or some other personal benefit but there's not a prot trump party in Canada uh that the parties are um they're going to differ about all kinds of important things and that does make voter Choice meaningful even if can Canadian voter choice is less dramatic than voter choice in other countries um but they are they are rallied around defending the country's National sovereignty and arguing a little bit about H how best to do it um so in some ways having lived through the I 17:01 remember the 1988 campaign over free trade which was probably the most bitter election of my lifetime this election I'm sure will get hot but in important ways this is the least bitter election of lifetime because on the fundamental existential questions you have so much consensus yeah that's right the the one unknown variable though it seems to me David is is Trump himself I've been wondering if at some point in this campaign he intrudes himself into the debate uh it's funny you and I have spoken several times over the past over the past year or longer about clandestine instances of foreign interference uh but what about a scenario where the president of the United States transparent Faceook and directly seeks to influence the election outcome um through his TR true social um yeah site uh in which every morning as leaders are getting up to make announcements in exchange with voters or the media he says something that fundamentally throws 18:01 the day into into disarray under that circumstance how should our media the political parties and even Canadians think about the the role and place of of the US president in in in such an extraordinary campaign right well and you need one thing that the media and those who discuss the campaign need to keep in mind is Donald Trump's extremely peculiar psychology yes whereas uh because while he wants to influence the campaign of course he also hates to be seen in any way affiliated with losing and so if one party or the other begins to come out ahead and we've seen this happened already Trump will suddenly announced that he favored that party all along because what he can't bear is what just happened to JD Vance in Greenland is you try to manipulate someone else's politics they reject you in fact you you create a consensus against you that maybe didn't exist before and Vance solidified opinion in Greenland against the United States and in favor of retaining the connection to Denmark because he was a bully and an 19:00 overbearing loudmouth um and Trump does that too but he has a little bit more self he because he so dreads any association with non-success that we've seen this where somebody pulls ahead and he oh I I that was the person I liked and the person who falls behind well that that person only fell behind because they didn't like me enough and there may be more rounds of of this game um and I think what I would encourage Canadians as a way to understand this is to in this case pay a little bit less attention to Trump's daily attempts to position himself as the winner of every game uh and to understand the nature of the threat from these tariffs um and for the general lack of respect for Canadian sovereignty and and also always to remember um that the the geography isn't changing the United States isn't going away uh the G the goal here has to find way so the Canadians 10 20 30 40 50 100 years from now can continue to live in 20:01 peace and Harmony and prosperity alongside like-minded American neighbors I have a peace going into the Atlantic um in a couple of days about contrasting the Canadian experience with the Mexican experience and the point I make about Mexico is that the Canadians have been giving admiring attention uh to Mexico because their president seems to have seems to attract less abuse but it's important to understand that Mexico is appeasing the United States much more than Canada is M and and can get away with that or um partly because they have much more risk they have fewer methods of response than Canada but also because they're a closed political system um they don't have elections for a long time the elections are not fully free and fair the media is under all kinds of State pressure and so if the president says one thing in public and does a different thing in private um she's got more scope to get away with that than leaders do in a more transparent and democratic system like candidas I I mentioned David that I've been struck how transactional our our 21:01 election has been thus far it it in many ways it's felt like a normal campaign where the different parties put forward their policy proposals in the name of reaching certain types of Voters or certain types of interests um to what extent do you think that that's a mistake um that our political parties need to pull up a bit and be more responsive um to this fundamental question of of Canada US relations and the country's ability to uh protect in advance its interest Visa the Trump Administration I think that's coming um I think a lot of the art of Canadian electioneering is um laying foundations and then building on top of that so um uh one of the reasons for the transactionality is the liberal party in particular um obviously got very away from where the Canadian mainstream was not only on economic issues but on cultural issues and faced with the challenge of trump to Canada's existence a lot of their pulling down the flag 22:00 stunts look even more unwise than they looked at the time and they looked pretty unwise at the time um so part of the transactionality is the um is the Liberals reconnecting to the Canadian center part of the transactionality is the conservatives who spent a lot of the past four years catering to very small agitated groups on vaccines and uh other kinds of restrictions now remembering oh yeah there is a general election electorate and the message that that again unwisely in my opinion they spent way too much time uh appeasing small groups on they they now you have to have transactional things because most most voters are concerned with things like um you know there are large there is one of the fastest growing blocks of Voters in candidate are voters over 80 they typically are more Fe much more female than male they typically have very little in the way of household savings they are very dependent on government support um and they want to know what's going to happen to them and they need stability they want to live out their 23:01 lives uh in tranquility and and without fear and they need to know how do I plan I have a small pension I have to extend this um what what's the offer and that th those people they're not responsive to news Cycles they are responsive to Big questions about their personal safety um and you have to remember them and so I think you will see my guess is that the more thematic messages uh will here appear in the last 10 days when the parties are talking to younger voters um voters with fewer immediate uh economic um demands on the state uh with more concerns about their long-term personal Futures in both in the PIV private as well as in the public sector um but I think the themes are coming but right now the parties they each have work to do to solve their particular problems yeah great great Insight I would just say in parenthesis one also wonders if the different parties are holding their fire on some of these other issues until we know precisely ly what comes out of the administration on April 2nd if for 24:01 instance that we have another delay in the enactment of tariffs on Canada it may cause the issue to dissipate um and for these pocketbook issues as you say to to to loom larger the administration is a little weaker than it was 48 hours ago maybe a lot weaker and yes um and and and the resistance is accumulating just on the day that you and I speak uh Bloomberg News had a story that the Trump Administration was considering imposing tariffs on copper so copper goes into every everything that uses electricity uh it's hard to think of a stupider idea than putting a tariff on copper I mean let me not belittle the because they they actually do come up with stupid ideas and that all the time but it's a pretty stupid idea um and when you get the sort of the wave of what are you talking about a tariff on copper that goes into every piece of electrical wiring in every Appliance in every home in every circuit in every office building are you crazy um that uh I I think it will penetrate even Donald 25:00 Trump's buffalo head that tariffs are bad poit I mean tariffs in general when you say stand up for America everybody says yes when you say you should pay more to wire your office building Americans say that's stupid no we don't want to do that and and that may have some effect on what happens if anything on April 2nd I I want to wrap up David uh with the generational point that you made a couple of minutes ago at the outset you talked about the similarities and differences between Canadian politics and in American politics one way in which Canadian politics has distinguished itself from a lot of other anglo-american countries uh in the past couple of years is the extent to which younger voters are increasingly drawn to the conservative party and older voters are increasingly drawn to the liberal party it's a generational flip from how people typically think of of uh the way that politics is done in Canada and elsewhere uh why don't you just talk a bit about um that Dynamic what do think is is driving it U and the extent to 26:01 which you think it it will influence the eventual outcome of the campaign so I'm just going to speculate a little bit because obviously I don't have a a lot of data on this um and I'm not the kind of person who is expert in this kind of data but I think two things are going on a specific thing and a general thing the specific thing is the people who are um young during the co pandemic we're subject to all kinds of hardships disruptions of their schooling um disruptions of their job their the beginnings of their career they were isolated without um without living with someone they loved probably um so it was they were more lonely and they really didn't like that experience and it was all to protect against a disease where they were not personally much at risk so the safety measures that were adopted during covid looked like if you were at the time between 15 and 22 those look for you that they were a very very bad bargain um and if in retrospect some of the measures look too Draconian over 27:00 cautious then then you then you're extra mad and so you are extra fed up with authority systems and the kind of people who speak for expertise who tend to be associated with the state and so you are voting against the party of the state and voting for the party of the right I think that's a specific thing I think there's a general thing also which is um as young men and women become less likely to marry and marriage is postponed and even partner um we are seeing an ideological Gap open between the Sexes where young women are moving more to the left and young men are moving more to the right but the young men seem to be moving farther and faster to the right than the young women are moving to the left and so when you aggregate the young men in the this the slight tilt of young women more to the left and the strong tilt of young men more to the right um B tilts the whole group in a right word direction um and uh I think the first phenomenon will pass with time because Co will fade into memory the second is more of a challenge 28:00 because um uh what we're discovering is it's it's it's destabilizing to democracy when men and women don't live together because if they do live together they discover you know I I have to care about her she has to care about me yeah uh great Insight um this generational divide is something that we'll be following closely over the course of of over the course of the campaign and and indeed its interaction with some of the issues we've already been talking about David including um the the extent to which older voters seem to be drawn to messages of security in the face of of the Trump administration's threats uh I look forward to having you on next week as uh we shift to a weekly schedule uh in this extraordinary moment of domestic politics and and geopolitical disruption uh thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to catching up next week byebye

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