1234, SAD! and other great political passwords

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

New from the German army, which once brought you “Olaf Scholz unable to fly because rats had eaten cables on his plane” (and some other stuff that we probably don’t need to go into here), comes Passwordgate.

When a scandal gets another scandal piled on top, you know you’re in trouble. So it was bad enough when audio of German military officers discussing top-secret information was intercepted by Russia. In the call, German top military brass discussed the hypothetical dispatching of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine (although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said he does not want to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine).

In response, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called the leak a “hybrid disinformation attack” in a statement on the national defense ministry website Sunday. However, journalists were told Pistorius’ statement was password-protected. The password? 1234.

Declassified can now reveal the super-secret passwords of several other countries.

Ukraine’s is “Russ1anWarsh1pG0F*ckY0urs3lf.” Seems pretty secure, if a nightmare to remember.

That of the United Kingdom is “Boris” because there wasn’t time to change it during the Liz Truss years — sorry, days — and no one ever expected Rishi Sunak to hang around for long (plus, Boris Johnson will definitely be back one day).

Hungary’s is just “password” in Hungarian, but due to the difficulty of the language that was deemed strong enough to deter most people.

In the United States, the password is, like Germany’s, “1234” in order to keep things simple for Joe Biden. But it’ll be changed after November when Donald Trump makes his inevitable way back into the White House, moving slowly toward reelection like a giant slug that no one dares throw salt on.

Trump’s password will be either “covfefe” or “SAD!” … or he just won’t bother having one, because he’ll tell Vladimir Putin everything anyway.

Speaking of Trump, the estate of the late, great Sinéad O’Connor has slammed his campaign for using her classic version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” at events. A statement points out that O’Connor once described Trump as a “Biblical devil,” which is actually quite a mild insult for a man whom the comedian Jon Stewart dubbed “Fuckface Von Clownstick.”

But Trump using music against the artist’s wishes is becoming a big issue. Last month, Johnny Marr condemned Trump after it emerged that he was using The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” as a warmup tune at a rally. 

Whisper it, but does Donald Trump have great taste in music?

Thanks to Joe Stanley-Smith.

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“We’re dressed like this so no one knows who we are.”
“Same.”

Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter/X @pdallisonesque

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Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s deputy EU editor.