Day 488: Report: Trump finds convenience more important than national security

Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton for use of a private email server during the run-up to the 2016 election. He claimed that she was careless with important intelligence and she couldn’t be trusted.

Now that the election is in the rear view mirror, Trump has decided to take dangerous gambles of his own.

According to Politico, Trump has at least two phones: one exclusively for making calls and another with the Twitter app and a handful of news sites. The phones are issued by White House Information Technology and the White House Communications Agency, the latter of which is staffed by military personnel.

While Barack Obama had his devices inspected for hacking or other suspicious activity every 30 days, Trump finds such precautions to be intrusive to his schedule.

While aides have urged the president to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, Trump has resisted their entreaties, telling them it was “too inconvenient,” the same administration official said.

The president has gone as long as five months without having the phone checked by security experts. It is unclear how often Trump’s call-capable phones, which are essentially used as burner phones, are swapped out.

Trump has a history of telling world leaders to call him on his unsecured cell phone, opening the door for potential nefarious activity.

If the devices have been compromised, they remain that way for many months at a time, with state secrets or private calls being picked up by whoever was savvy enough to hack in. If a smartphone is hacked, it can be used to spy on its user by monitoring keystrokes, triggering the microphone to be used for eavesdropping on calls and conversations, or even remotely activating the camera.

To Trump, those risks are outweighed by the convenience of not having his phones changed out.

488 days in, 974 to go

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