A new report flagged several examples of how President Donald Trump's "favorite justification" for his wildest moves has created some catastrophic risks.
Trump has cited "national security risks" for several of his most controversial moves, like threatening to annex Greenland and deploying his immigration agents across the country, according to a new report from Mother Jones. The report also highlighted how those moves show Trump has taken the "national security" excuse to "catastrophic" levels.
"Of course, American presidents have been using 'national security' as an excuse to expand surveillance and start wars since before the smoke from the Twin Towers cleared, and Trump is no exception," the report reads in part. "In his first term, his long list of national security 'threats' included Japanese cars, Chinese telecom equipment, and briefly, the gay hookup app Grindr."
"But in his second term, Trump — whose constantly shifting stories about his own actions at Ground Zero defy credulity — has taken this tactic to even more absurd, and sometimes catastrophic, extremes," it added.
The report also flagged how Trump's invocations of "national security" have created some disastrous consequences. For instance, the Trump Department of Justice claimed that xAI's chatbot Grok's "operation and availability is a matter of paramount national security," according to the report. The DOJ cited the Department of Defense's Operation Epic Fury, where troops used Grok to deploy "over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours," the report added.