President Donald Trump showed his lack of government experience last week when he reportedly shared highly classified information with Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting, said John Dean, who served as counsel to President Richard Nixon.
"Having been in government, having had classified status for a number of years, I can tell you it's hard enough for government employees who are experienced to know what line they can go up to and not cross," Dean said Monday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."
The proper action is to simply say nothing when one gets into classified areas, Dean said. And though a president sometimes does have to speak, he typically does so only after carefully thinking about what to say ahead of time.
"Mr. Trump has no government experience," Dean said. "Here again, it's showing."
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's denial didn't really hit all the points of what Monday's Washington Post story alleged, Dean noted, sparking speculation from critics that it was essentially a non-denial denial.
"It is conspicuous," he said. "It's very obvious they are not banging away at the story itself. They are playing around it. I don't know if they think this will get confused in translation or what's going to happen. It's not a very strong defense even."
Dean said his biggest concern with Donald Trump's election had been "the fact that he didn't know what he was doing." When he then did not surround himself with a powerful and experienced staff, "he was asking for more problems."
Trump needs to have someone who knows their way around Washington, he said, "because the people who are there right now really do not know what they're doing. And it's fairly dangerous. This is a very dangerous situation they have gone into today."
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