President Obama was not signalling to National Intelligence Director James Clapper that he should curtail what classified information he shares with Donald Trump when he said on Tuesday that some Republican rhetoric about terrorism is dangerous, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday.
“The president was sending a very explicit and direct warning about the danger of that kind of rhetoric,” but was not seeking to influence Clapper, Earnest said.
“[W]e are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind of thinking can be,” Obama said after a counter-Islamic State meeting with his national security team on Tuesday. “We’re starting to see where this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we’re fighting, where this can lead us. We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America.”
Earnest said Clapper alone will decide what information Trump and Hillary Clinton receive once they officially become their parties’ nominees next month.
“The president has complete confidence in the judgment that Director Clapper will exercise free of political interference about how to effectively brief both parties’ presidential nominees,” Earnest said.
