The 9 Dumbest Defenses for Trump Keeping Nuclear Secrets at Mar-a-Lago

Mike Davis, a Republican activist who bills himself online as the former Chief Counsel for Nominations at the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, claims that Trump can declassify anything he wants and simply taking them out of the White House declassified the documents in his possession.

“Before Attorney General Merrick Garland’s spin: The President of the United States has both the constitutional (and statutory) power to declassify anything he wants. If President Trump left the White House with classified records, they are declassified by his actions. Period,” Davis tweeted.

But that’s simply not true.

While presidents have broad authority to declassify just about anything, it’s not clear Trump ever actually declassified the documents in his possession. If he had, it’s unlikely the National Archives would be so desperate to get their hands on them. Taking them out of the White House doesn’t automatically declassify them.

And while presidents can declassify just about anything, nuclear secrets still require more than a single president to declassify, according to legal experts who spoke with MSNBC last night.

“There’s an entire another law that comes into play here. It’s called the Atomic Energy Act. It has its own classification regime and Donald Trump could not declassify those records on his own,” said Bradley Moss, a national defense lawyer.

Jesse Waters had one of the dumbest defenses of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents on Thursday. What if he just wanted some souvenirs?

“You know, Trump’s a memento guy. You’ve seen inside his office. There is a lot of clutter, memorabilia. Trump’s team thought they’d given him everything they asked for, but the next thing you know, 30 guys show up with guns and want to look in Melania’s closet,” Fox News talking head Jesse Waters said on his show Thursday.

Geoffrey Ingersoll, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller, floated the idea that maybe the classified documents about nukes weren’t actually that important.

“Anyone who’s familiar with what the scope of ‘nuclear documents’ is should be skeptical when these unnamed officials refuse to get more specific than ‘nuclear documents’,” Ingersoll tweeted on Thursday.

“It could be a memo about China’s tests with fusion (which were public knowledge), it could be since declassified sub locations. It almost certainly was not detailed schematics for American snukes [sic] or something wild like that. It’s clearly just a hit or there’d be details,” Ingersoll continued.

What an amazing rationalization. Do you think Ingersoll, whose website has published plenty of literal Nazis over the years, would bend over backwards with his reasoning if former president Barack Obama had kept nuclear documents at his home?

Ari Fleischer, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, just couldn’t wrap his head around why Trump would have classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago. And he came up with a lot of imaginary excuses for Trump, none of which mentioned that the former president simply sees himself above the law.

“One thing I can’t wrap my arms around: If Trump had classified documents, why didn’t he give them back? Maybe he thought they were declassified. Maybe he thought it was government overreach. But if, for whatever reason, you have a classified document at home, you give it back,” Fleischer tweeted.

Michael Tracey, a pro-Trump online influencer who’s perhaps best known for getting his ass beat by Rep. Maxine Waters, parroted a common defense on Thursday, insisting that if the documents really had

“Leaks to WaPo now claim ‘documents relating to nuclear weapons’ were ‘sought’ at Mar-a-Lago. No word on whether they were recovered. Taking this story at face value, the DOJ decided to wait a year and a half before tracking down the USA’s most closely guarded nuclear secrets?” Tracey tweeted.

The answer, of course, is that the National Archives did ask for them a long time ago, but Trump only handed over just 15 of the roughly 27 boxes earlier this year, according to the Washington Post.

Lara Trump took to Fox News on Thursday to make an argument very similar to the one Jesse Waters made.

“We don’t even know that Donald Trump did anything wrong. These are like clippings from newspapers. These are photographs. These are documents that he’s allowed to take from the White House,” Lara Trump said.

Everything else aside, why is she blinking so much in this clip?

Erick Erickson, a radio host in Georgia who’s perhaps most famous for shooting the New York Times with a gun,

“Personal theory: They used classified documents as the excuse to search, but were really looking for January 6 related materials. They didn’t find them. So they’re now pushing back claiming it really was the classified docs all along,” Erickson tweeted on Thursday.

Dave Gainor, a commentator for Fox News, thinks the FBI is making a mountain out of a molehill.

“By Monday, the New York Times will be running a story about how Trump had the Ark of the Covenant,” Gainor tweeted.

Get it? It’s all a big joke. Nothing matters. And if you don’t get the joke, you’re just a lying Democrat idiot.

Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana made incendiary comments on Fox News, alleging that the FBI and Department of Justice were simply out to kill the former president.

“The FBI and the Department of Justice are going to give Trump a fair and impartial firing squad,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy was probably joking, at least in part, but how many Trump supporters know that or even care? Not many, we’d guess, given the current trajectory of Trump’s most loyal wingnuts.