Trump says he has right to share facts with Russia

One day after reports he leaked "highly classified information" to top Russian officials, President Trump defended his right to share "facts" about terrorism and airline safety as part of a joint counterterrorism effort to fight the Islamic State.

Perhaps tellingly, McMaster delivered the statement from a prepared text, and did not take questions. "The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false", he said.

Eliot Cohen, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said on Twitter that if Trump had given the classified material to the Russians deliberately, "it would be treason".

The disclosure put a source of intelligence on the Islamic State at risk, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the disclosure on Monday. "Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources" in the news report, he said. For our national security, and our intelligence-sharing relationships, the consequences could be worse.

But that isn't what happened here.

In response to months of damaging stories about turmoil amid White House staff, Trump's conversations with foreign leaders, and the ongoing investigation into whether Trump campaign staffers colluded with Russian officials who interfered in the us election, the President has insisted that those leaks themselves are the "real news".

But if you still think his surrogates have a point-and that they and the president are on the same page-you need only look at the president's reaction this morning for some more clarity.

Contrast this record with the administration's response. He says "it didn't happen", but he doesn't say what "it" is.

This handout photo released by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shows President Donald Trump meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017.

Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said allies will be trying to size up Trump's "actual political strength relative to the divisions with Congress, the problems within his own party". "The president only discussed the common threats both countries faced".

Trump's apparent corroboration of at least portions of the Post's story shortly followed the Kremlin's denial of the story.

"The president wasn't even aware where this information came from", McMaster said. Yet his decision to discuss an ally's information on the Islamic State with other countries could damage his standing with world leaders and lead some countries to start second-guessing their own intelligence-sharing agreements with the U.S. According to McMaster, Trump "did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known".

Soon after the report was published, the administration contended that it was false and that Trump did not reveal sources of intelligence, methods of gathering intelligence or military operations.

In another Tuesday morning Tweet, Trump again took aim at what he called "leakers", saying he has been seeking assistance in rooting them out, including from the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director.

White House National Security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday denied reports that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian Federation during a meeting last week, telling reporters at a White House press briefing that only "wholly appropriate" information was shared.

Trump's contradiction of the Russian spokeswoman also appeared to catch his biggest boosters, the cast of "Fox and Friends", by surprise, as the historian Keven Kruse noted.

"I would say an overabundance of caution but I'm not sure", McMaster said. He ducked the question, instead disputing what he called the story's "premise": that what Trump had said in the meeting was "inappropriate". But Trump did seem to acknowledge sharing classified-or at least highly sensitive-information by claiming an "absolute right" to have done so. McMaster disputed none of these allegations.