Three weeks after the president signed a first-of-its-kind executive order targeting a former official for defying him, Time magazine asked Trump a good question: “You recently signed memos calling for an investigation of Chris Krebs, a top cybersecurity official in your first term. Isn’t that, though, what you accused [Joe Biden] of doing to you?” The president responded:

I think Chris Krebs was a disgrace to our country. I think he was — I think he was terrible. By the way, I don’t know him. I’m not — I don’t think I ever met him. ... I know very little about Chris Krebs, but I think he was very deficient.[/blockquote]

Right off the bat, there’s the obvious problem that Trump thinks the former cybersecurity leader — who, again, did literally nothing wrong during his work in Trump’s own administration — is “a disgrace,” despite the inconvenient detail that the president knows “very little” about him.

But just as notable was the degree to which the president ignored the underlying question that Time magazine was right to ask: For all of Trump’s hysterical conspiracy theories about the Biden administration “weaponizing” federal law enforcement, it was Trump who signed an executive order that directed the Justice Department to go after one of his perceived political foes.....

As for Krebs himself, the former official has said very little about the president’s executive order, though he has spoken out against the administration’s policy agenda in his area of expertise.

As NBC News reported, Krebs received a warm welcome from industry professionals at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, a cybersecurity conference, where he criticized the second Trump administration for its repeated cuts to cybersecurity employees, contractors and programs.

“Cybersecurity is national security. We all know that, right? That’s why we’re here. That’s why we get up every morning and do our jobs. We are protecting everyone out there. And right now, to see what’s happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”