Richard DeAgazio is not a big-name actor. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He found himself in the news on Monday, though, for committing a mistake that may have endangered the lives of the American people; he posted photos on his public Facebook page about the meetings President Donald Trump held at his Florida estate, including pictures with a man he named as the keeper of the "nuclear football."
Public photos
This weekend, North Korea decided to test the new administration by testing their ballistic missiles and dropping them in the Japan Sea.
This occurred while Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate. Instead of kicking paying members out of the club to deal with the crisis, Trump allowed them to stay and witness diplomacy at its finest.
One of those witnesses was Richard DeAgazio, who showed no hesitation to take some remarkable photos of the happenings on Saturday night. Some pictures just showed the unfolding scene of crisis aversion. One particularly striking picture showed DeAgazio posing with a soldier, attaching a caption that talked about the very soldier being one who holds the key to the most destructive power the United States possesses. The commonality: all of the photos were marked public on Facebook.
Backlash
The backlash for the situation is coming via all sorts of angles. For one, the optics of having a nuclear weapon seemingly at the ready while dealing with a crisis involving a burgeoning nuclear nation are poor. Even if Trump had no intention to put the weapon to use (and there was no reason to believe he was ready to hit the switch), it demonstrates the rash reactionary state Trump often finds himself in.
Security is at stake too, though. How could someone like DeAgazio, who likely has no clearance of any type, be allowed to get so close to the president, or to someone who holds the fate of nations in his briefcase? Gaffes like these could seem funny or endearing, but more pressingly, they could put lives at risk.
