“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — President Donald Trump on COVID-19, January 22nd, 2020.
Nothing makes me worry more about the SolarWinds hack than Trump now saying it’s ‘under control’
Negative credibility
Negative credibility
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” — Trump on COVID-19, February 24th.
“It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” — Trump on COVID-19, March 15th.
Here’s Trump today, on the massive SolarWinds hack that targeted federal agencies and could have exposed 425 of the companies on the Fortune 500: “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control.”
You don’t say.
Here are a few perspectives on the SolarWinds hack from entities that do not currently have negative credibility:
- The US government’s leading security agencies: “The FBI, CISA, and ODNI have formed a Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) to coordinate a whole-of-government response to this significant cyber incident”
- CISA in particular: “CISA has determined that this threat poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations”
- Trump’s own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity”
- Former Trump DHS advisor Thomas Bossert: “The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate. The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months”
- Former CISA director Christopher Krebs, who was fired by Trump for calling out his lies about election fraud:
- Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “The SolarWinds hack is a devastating breach of U.S. networks and once again shows that the President and the White House are not taking this issue seriously enough.”
Here’s hoping the SolarWinds hack turns out to be a big nothing! Certainly doesn’t seem like it, though.
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