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Analysis After loving WikiLeaks as a candidate, Trump doesn't like leaks as president
Donald Trump may be forced to confront the consequences of normalising a culture of leaks and hacks
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A month before the election, US President Donald Trump stood before a cheering crowd at a rally in northeast Pennsylvania and declared: “I love WikiLeaks!”
Back then, Trump loved anything that made his rival Hillary Clinton look bad - even if the information had been hacked, stolen or leaked. Trump repeatedly celebrated and shared information released by WikiLeaks, calling the anti-secrecy organisation “a treasure trove.” During a news conference last summer, Trump even urged Russia - which US intelligence agencies believe has links to WikiLeaks - to look for tens of thousands of emails from Clinton’s private server that were not handed over to the US Justice Department.
Watch: Trump declares love for WikiLeaks at rally
But now that he is in the White House, Trump is having to confront the threat of hacking, along with leaks from within his own administration - and, suddenly, he is not a fan. Trump and his aides have angrily railed against leakers, threatening to find and prosecute them and urging congressional allies to investigate, while being uncharacteristically quiet when it comes to WikiLeaks.
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The latest sign of how the tables have turned came Tuesday when WikiLeaks announced that it had obtained a vast portion of the CIA’s closely guarded cyberweapons and began posting files online. The breach could cause massive fallout among US allies and poses a serious challenge for Trump, who has been feuding with the intelligence community over probes into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia.
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White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the latest WikiLeaks dump during a briefing with reporters Tuesday, saying it “has not been fully evaluated.” But moments later, Spicer did decry leaks generally, saying they “are threatening our national security.”
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