Republicans Still Don't Give a Damn About National Security

About three weeks ago, I pointed out how laughable it was that Trump shut down the government, ostensibly in the name of national security.

Today, we saw more evidence of how little the nation's security actually means to Trump:

Jared Kushner's application for a top-secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

. . .

After reviewing the file, CIA officers who make clearance decisions balked, two of the people familiar with the matter said. One called over to the White House security division, wondering how Kushner got even a top-secret clearance, the sources said. Top-secret information is defined as material that would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed to adversaries.

And if that isn't bad enough, Kushner's case is hardly an isolated one (emphasis mine):

The sources said they did not know whether Kline was in communication with senior political White House officials. They say he overruled career bureaucrats at least 30 times, granting top-secret clearances to officials in the Executive Office of the President or the White House after adjudicators working for him recommended against doing so.

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican head of the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, naturally spent the day focused on blaming Chuck Schumer for the fact that air traffic controllers weren't getting paid during the government shutdown.

It's really fascinating how Republicans can pretend to be outraged when a Secretary of State fails to follow email protocol (but only when the SoS is a Democrat, naturally), but literally could not care less when a Republican president is handing out top-level security clearances to his family and flunkies like candy.