When Donald Trump tweeted the above photo showing a damaged Iranian missile launch site after an August 30, 2019 intelligence briefing, he caught the intelligence community off-guard because the photo was highly classified at the time due to the counterintelligence that could be gleaned from it, NBC News reports.

While critics debated if Trump disclosed Top Secret information to our adversaries by putting the image on social media, Trump supporters cried a familiar refrain:  he’s president and he can declassify anything he wants.  Now NBC News confirmed that the photo was secret, and Trump didn’t think twice about putting it on social media. 

The photo shows the Imam Khomeini Space Center in Iran on August 29, 2019 in the aftermath of a failed test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.  By tweeting out the photo, Trump gave all adversaries the possible operations specifications of one of the US’s highly classified spy satellites.

Trump’s intelligence briefing on August 30th included the photo, which prompted Trump to whip out his cell phone to photograph it and put it up on Twitter immediately.  CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire tried to dissuade Trump from posting the photo, telling Trump that doing so would expose America’s intelligence capabilities.

“Look, I’m the president, I can declassify anything,” Trump reportedly replied.