President Donald Trump has a hard time keeping a secret.

His Friday morning tweet teasing a positive jobs report before its public release was just the latest of many cases where Trump has let slip something he wasn’t supposed to.


As commander in chief, Trump has the power to share any information he wants. But his norm-busting desire to dish details on everything from foreign policy to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to a political rival’s cellphone number has alarmed critics who worry that he could disclose information that moves markets or even risks lives.

Political allies and former advisers concede that Trump has trouble holding his tongue — especially when he can boost his image or clinch an argument. The president’s flair for speaking freely, they say, was formed during his heyday as a New York tabloid fixture, when he straddled the worlds of entertainment and business and learned the power of gossip and illicit truths.

“He’s good at keeping secrets that involve him,” said Sam Nunberg, one of Trump’s earliest 2016 presidential campaign aides. Invoking the Yiddish word for a female gossip, he added of Trump: “On the other hand, the guy’s a fucking yenta.”

While loose lips are common in Washington, Trump’s style hardly meshes well with a president’s responsibility to protect the deluge of political and state secrets that cross his desk.

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Just days before his controversial Friday tweet hinting that an upcoming monthly jobs report would be favorable, Trump drew fire after POLITICO reported that he had bragged before Republican donors in New York last week about a February battle between U.S. troops and Russian mercenaries in Syria that remains classified, even though some details of the clash have appeared in the media.

But Trump’s indiscreet style has been clear since his first months in office. After a North Korean missile launch in February 2017, Trump conferred over maps and documents with Japan’s prime minister — while sitting in view of dinner guests at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in South Florida. Last May, Trump treated Russian officials visiting the Oval Office to classified Israel intelligence about a counterterrorism operation in Syria.

Some of Trump’s seemingly spontaneous moves appear like they were done for dramatic effect — as if he were still the executive producer of a hit reality television show.

During the 2016 presidential primaries, Trump unpleasantly surprised his GOP rival, Lindsey Graham, by announcing the South Carolina senator’s personal cellphone number on live television. Last October, Trump mused cryptically in front of White House reporters about the “calm before the storm” during a meeting with military commanders and their spouses in the State Dining Room. In March, the president made an impromptu visit to the White House briefing room to tease a “major announcement” from South Korean officials who were visiting Washington. Even Trump’s own press office was left scrambling to figure out what was going on.

Trump’s incessant Twitter feed has also been a place where secrets go to die. His tweet about the jobs report comes two weeks after Trump blasted Mueller’s probe as a “$10,000,000 Russian Witch Hunt.” That figure raised eyebrows because it was far higher than Mueller’s last budget report had indicated when it was released months earlier. Then, on Thursday, the Justice Department released an updated total for the latest six-month reporting period from last October through March: $10 million. But Mueller likely submitted his budget weeks earlier, meaning it would have been circulating within the Justice Department by the time of Trump’s tweet.

Trump broke ranks again on Friday with a Twitter post saying he was “looking forward to seeing the employment numbers” an hour before their formal release. The president, who was briefed on the figures Thursday night on Air Force One, didn’t violate the government’s strict rules prohibiting comments on the sensitive economic data until an hour after its 8:30 a.m. Eastern time public release.

But after the tweet appeared to move the stock markets, it drew rebukes from former U.S. officials in both parties who stressed that rules preventing disclosure of jobs numbers are crucial to preventing insider trading and maintaining the stock market’s integrity.

Former Obama White House officials said Trump’s predecessor, like presidents before him, managed to keep some of the world’s most sensational secrets mum.

“Could President Obama keep a secret? Ask Osama bin Laden,” said a former senior Obama aide, noting that Obama spoke at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the eve of the raid that killed the Sept. 11 mastermind. “Didn’t show his hand at all. “

“Trump’s premature announcements may be his way of showing off, but if you’re a service member in the middle of an operation, a shareholder that expects fair play in the market, or a diplomat trying to quietly close a deal, they’re dangerous and destructive,” added Ben LaBolt, a deputy spokesman from the Obama White House.

Ari Fleischer, the former George W. Bush White House press secretary, said that as the nation’s chief executive, the president has the “prerogative” to discuss nonmilitary and nonsensitive matters such as Mueller’s budget.

But Fleischer took issue with Trump’s jobs report tweet and the release of Israeli intelligence to Russian officials.

“I’m very uncomfortable when the president wings it on matters that are sensitive or deal with intelligence,” he said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But former aides who know Trump’s ways say they’re not surprised at the phenomenon, given his fondness for a constant churn of voices around him. The result, they concede, is that sometimes he leaks on his own team.

“He’s a people person,” said former Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “He relays information because he wants to solicit as much feedback as possible. I don’t see that as a negative. I see that as a positive.”

Of course, the president isn’t a complete open book. Nunberg boasted that Trump and his advisers kept a lid on his plans for running for president until he made his June 2015 announcement at Trump Tower. But such examples seem like exceptions to the rule.

Trump’s indiscretion has even been the subject of late night comedy.

After news broke in April of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s clandestine visit to North Korea, the ABC host Jimmy Kimmel expressed joking amazement.

“The most surprising thing about this secret meeting is that Trump was able to keep it secret. He didn’t accidentally tweet it while it was happening,” Kimmel said.