.jpg)
The newly elected Prime Minister of the UK is probably a little red-faced at the moment.
I’m not sure if that makes him “cheeky”, or if that’s a completely different thing all together.
But if any of those words means EMBARASSED — that’s what I’m trying to say.
PM Andy Burnham handled a scammer from an unknown number just about as tactfully as my father-in-law, who makes it a daily ritual to argue with the junk callers.
The only difference is that my father-in-law doesn’t have his finger on any nuclear codes and doesn’t head up a national government, that I know of.
Burnham on the other hand, as the nuclear-wielding head of the United Kingdom, apparently traded messages back and forth from an unknown number claiming to be President Trump’s Chief of Staff recently.
How big of a deal is that?
It was serious enough that the British reached out to the White House, as reported by CNN:
Did you catch that part where the Prime Minister’s people reported back to CNN that their policy is to avoid discussing ‘national security matters’?
That’s funny — because most of the statements coming from UK officials about this incident have desperately tried to characterize it as just a few meaningless messages of no importance.
In other words, they actually are commenting on the ‘national security matter’, and claiming there was no danger.
Of course, no “official” word from the UK government on the details of the SECURITY BREACH. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself there.)
Along those lines, check out this clip from the British news channel, GBN, indicating that the UK government is trying their best to be dismissive of any security concern, while the news anchors themselves are clearly not buying it:
If you watched that clip, you heard the British news anchors repeat the concerns that initially spread from the UK government.
The initial story was that Susie Wiles phone had been hacked again, as it appeared to have been last year.
I’ll note that if that were the case, the British Prime Minister might not have anything to be red-faced about after all.
Wouldn’t it be fortunate for the Prime Minister if that had been the case?
But the White House pushed back against that claim, according to this from Politico:
In fact, the reporting indicates this was not a call from Susie Wiles’ number, or even a spoofed number that only appeared to be hers.
Rather, it came from an unknown number.
And the big story on the UK side of things isn’t that the scammer pretended to be President Trump’s Chief of Staff.
Besides even the fact that PM Burnham answered the unknown number — how did the scammer have the British Prime Minister’s phone number to begin with?
Here’s another clip from the British news channel GBN in which they raise exactly that question:
As the GBN anchor quipped, someone accessed the UK Prime Minister’s personal phone number.
And has that been fixed?
Top UK government officials STILL have their numbers readily accessible — making them prime targets for these types of fake messages — as was reported in The Guardian:
Downing Street’s reliance on the “we don’t talk about national security matters” has essentially allowed UK officials to claim the security breach wasn’t a security breach.
Meanwhile, in other news…
President Trump said he had a ‘good conversation’ with PM Andy Burnham today to discuss some important matters:
I have to wonder if the Prime Minister was sweating bullets, wondering all the while if Trump was really Trump!
What are the odds old Burnahm asked President Trump to mention the call publicly in front of cameras because he needed some sort of verification?
That sounds implausible, right?
Except, against the backdrop of the UK Prime Minister answering unknown numbers and trading messages with an unverified scammer claiming to be Susie Wiles — who knows!?
Continue reading...
[ H/T WLT Report ]
