Democrats, Republicans worry about ‘alarming’ leaks of Trump phone calls – Washington Examiner

Democrats and Republicans on Thursday said they were worried about the leak of dozens of pages to the Washington Post detailing a phone call President Trump had with two foreign leaders.

"I am alarmed at leaks of conversations between two heads of state. It doesn't matter what I think of this president, this is terrible," said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

The Washington Post published full conversations that Trump had over the phone with Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto on Jan. 27 and with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Jan. 28.

"I would've lost my mind if transcripts of Obama's calls to foreign leaders leaked. He wouldn't have sounded so dumb, but it's still absurd," said Tommy Vietor, former U.S. National Security Council spokesman for President Barack Obama.

"Transcripts seem carefully selected to do maximum harm to Trump, minimum to his foreign interlocutors. Somebody thought about this," said David Frum, former speechwriter to President George W. Bush and a senior editor at The Atlantic.

"Fully associate myself with @davidfrum. Regardless of one's politics or of reasons behind the leak, it is dangerous to our foreign policy," said John Kirby, former spokesman for the United States Department of State for Obama.

"Leaking transcripts of presidential calls to foreign leaders is bad," New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat said.

"Most recent leak of Trump's foreign leader calls sets a dangerous precedent, as does an ever-lying president destroying our sense of truth," said Mindy Finn, 2016 Vice-presidential running mate of independent candidate Evan McMullin.

"Yes, I know, Trump is awful etc etc. But how does that make it acceptable to leak something like this to public? Never happened under Obama," Attorney Jeffrey Blehar said.

"Foreign leaders need to know they can talk confidentially and not have their opinions on the democracy dies in darkness' front page," New York Post Columnist John Podhoretz said. "Someone should leak Jeff Bezos's confidential conversations with, say, Apple and see how that goes."

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Democrats, Republicans worry about 'alarming' leaks of Trump phone calls - Washington Examiner

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