During his campaign, President Donald
Trump couldn’t be more pleased with the work
WikiLeaks had done – which was undoubtedly
a factor in his winning of the 2016 election. The
internet site was responsible for releasing the
hacked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign
manager, John Podesta. These leaks contained
scandalous evidence of collusion between the
Clinton campaign and the DNC Chairman at
the time, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in an effort
to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders.
Extremely satisfied with the unprecedented fallout
dealt upon the Clinton campaign brought
by these Podesta leaks, Trump proclaimed that
he loved WikiLeaks to a crowd in Pennsylvania,
in October 2016.
Now that he is president, however, it appears
that Trump’s views on the website have
completely changed. In February 2017, Trump
railed against the leakers in a Tweet, saying that
“classified information is illegally given out by
‘intelligence’ like candy”, and that media platforms
such as the New York Times entertaining
the leaked information as news is “very un-
American!” That was Trump’s response to the
leaked phone calls between former National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russian
Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, which ultimately
led to Flynn’s resignation from the position.
The latest leak, nicknamed Vault 7, was
released by WikiLeaks on March 7, and their
press release proclaimed it to be “the largest
ever publication of confidential documents”
against the Central Intelligence Agency. Such
documents claim to contain information on the CIA’s seemingly limitless hacking abilities,
along with their own collusion with technology
companies to keep their products hackable.
Both Republicans and Democrats have
condemned these latest leaks, and the White
House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, released a
statement saying that “Playing with our nation’s
national security is not something that should
be taken lightly under this administration.”
Regarding the obvious hypocrisy seen
by the Trump Administration and many other Republicans in the changing of views from
loving WikiLeaks during the campaign to condemning
their actions during the presidency,
it is worth noting that the Democrats are also
guilty of this constant change in perception of
the leaks based on what fits their agenda. In
2010, when the website leaked thousands of
videos of alleged US war crimes in Iraq under
the George W. Bush Administration, Democrats
enjoyed the repercussions faced against
the Republicans.