Trump’s iPhone is a warning sign

[BloombergOpinion]( [Early Returns]( [Jonathan Bernstein]( Sometimes, all it takes is one story to remind us that President Donald Trump, 21 months in, remains wildly unfit for office. In this case, it’s Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times detailing [Trump’s persistent use of an unsecured mobile phone](. It’s one of those stories in which every paragraph contains a new “wow” – beginning, as usual, with the existence of the story itself. The piece is sourced to “several current and former officials” who talked “out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.” In other words: Apparently nothing else worked, so they’re taking a stab at public pressure. The revelations in this story? I counted eight blockbusters: - Trump insists on using his personal iPhone, even after he’s been told that Chinese and Russian intelligence are almost certainly listening in. - He’s supposed to swap out his official phones every month to provide some security, but he usually doesn’t. - He continues using his unsecured phone, apparently, because it allows him to keep his list of contacts. In other words, he’s jeopardizing national security to avoid the minor inconvenience of dialing. - He also uses the phone to evade having his calls logged by the White House, because he doesn’t want his staff to know who he’s speaking with. - China is apparently using what it learns by eavesdropping to manipulate Trump’s friends so they can manipulate him. - Officials think the Russians aren’t bothering to do the same “because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin.” - Those close to Trump evidently assume that he would blurt out classified information on his unsecured phone. - Except for one thing: They think he pays so little attention to his briefings that he may not know enough classified information to leak anything important. I’m not even including the time when Trump left his iPhone behind in a golf cart. Nor am I including the incredible hypocrisy of a president who campaigned on – and still constantly talks about – the information-security practices of his opponent. Again: This is, like so many other damaging revelations about Trump, information that comes from within his administration. From people, that is, with an interest in making Trump look good. We’ve never had a president whose own staff made him look this bad, especially not while he was in office. Which makes you wonder: If this is what they’re willing to say now, what are they saving for their memoirs? What are they withholding because it would really harm the president or the country? I know Trump fans are going to dismiss all this as another attack from the liberal media. But if they sincerely believe that, they’re fooling themselves. No major newspaper would go with a story like this unless they had solid sources. Whatever the political preferences of reporters and editors, their careers require them to get major stories right. So do the business models of their employers. That doesn’t mean they never make mistakes, or that there are no biases about what gets reported or how stories get told. But the basic facts are very likely to be correct. At any rate, 21 months in, there’s hardly any push-back from current or former officials against the general portrait of the president that emerges from stories like this. You might argue that concerns about Trump’s fitness are overblown, given the absence of any real disasters to date. But that’s simply not true. Inept presidents don’t always create immediate catastrophes. Jimmy Carter did just fine for a while. At least, there were no flashing warning signs that he wasn’t up to the job. In retrospect, though, it’s clear that the ingredients for policy failure were being put in place early on, that smaller mistakes were adding up, and that a more obvious disaster was all but inevitable once the right circumstances came along. That was the story of Carter and George W. Bush. It’s very likely the story of Trump, too. 1. Sean Kates, Jonathan M. Ladd and Joshua Tucker at the Monkey Cage with a new survey on [attitudes about democracy]( in the U.S. 2. Matt Grossmann on the relationship between [partisanship and race and gender issues](. 3. Missed this one, but it’s worth it: Jennifer L. Lawless and Sean M. Theriault at LegBranch on women and men, and Republicans and Democrats, [in Congress](. 4. Michael J. Malbin on the latest [congressional fundraising reports](. 5. A good John Harwood item on the [continuing creep of Medicaid expansion]( after the midterms. 6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Al Hunt on [voter suppression and the 2018 election](. 7. And Jamelle Bouie on [bigotry as an electoral strategy](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click [here]( to subscribe. Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. Bloomberg L.P. ● 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Web]( ● [Facebook]( ● [Twitter]( [Feedback]( ● [Unsubscribe]( If you believe this has been sent to you in error, please safely [unsubscribe](.