Ross: Why Trump stole the documents, and then bragged about it
Jun 27, 2023, 7:16 AM | Updated: 8:22 am

FILE - Former President Donald Trump listens as he speaks with reporters while in flight on his plane after a campaign rally at Waco Regional Airport, in Waco, Texas, on March 25, 2023, while en route to West Palm Beach, Fla. An audio recording that includes new details from a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where former President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify has been released. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
We now have the audio recording of Trump he shouldn鈥檛 have had. You can even hear the sound of him waving the papers to the people in the room.
But what鈥檚 more important to me is what鈥檚 in those documents 鈥 which, based on what we hear Trump saying, was a plan to attack Iran drawn up by the US military.
More from Dave Ross: Maybe there should be a leadfoot tax
Here鈥檚 the excerpt from the recording made in July of 2021 at Trump鈥檚 Bedminster resort in New Jersey. He was talking to a group of people working on a book about his administration.
“Well, with [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark] Milly, well, let me see that, I need to show you an example. He said I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t it amazing I have a big pile of papers?” Trump said. “This was him; they presented me with this; this is off the record; they presented me this. by the way, this was him, this was the defense department and him. This wasn’t done by me. This was him. Pages long.聽Isn’t that amazing? Just totally wins my case. You know?”
So he鈥檚 talking about documents that lay out a plan to attack Iran, and he says this was all conjured up by the military, not by him.
So why is this significant?
Because in November 2020, the New York Times reported that 鈥淭rump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting 鈥 whether he had options to take action against Iran鈥檚 main nuclear site鈥 before he left office.
He was considering an attack of some kind.
At the time, Iran was in the process of increasing its stockpile of nuclear material after Trump blew off Obama鈥檚 nuclear deal, and Trump was apparently trying to figure out what to do.
His generals and his advisers tried to tell him that an attack would be crazy, but they evidently gave him the options.
And this was all written up in the classified documents which Trump stole. And so here he is, holding court at Bedminster a year ago, telling the people writing the history of his administration that he never considered attacking Iran, and the Generals wrote up those documents to make him look bad.
To me, that explains why he stole the papers. He wanted to know what the “Deep State” was saying about him 鈥 and once he found out, he proudly produced the documents so he could spin the story for the history books.
But what’s lost in all this is that thanks largely to Trump, Iran now has enough material for a nuclear weapon. The only question is, will it actually choose to assemble one?
Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien weekday mornings from 5 鈥 9 a.m. on 成人X站 Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the聽podcast here.