Trump & Intelligence: Two words that should never be used anywhere near one another.
Earlier this week, the directors of our major intelligence agencies appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to present their Worldwide Threat Assessment. The report itself is a tough, depressing read and is best paired with a bottle of good Scotch.
Those appearing included:
- Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence
- Gina Haspel, CIA Director
- Christopher Wray, FBI Director
- Gen. Paul Nakasone, National Security Agency Director
- Gen. Robert Ashley, Defense Intelligence Agency Director
- Robert Cardillo, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director
While I disagree with the political opinions of a few of these folks, it’d be tough to say that this crowd doesn’t have the credentials to back up any unanimous positions regarding national security. Coats is a former Ambassador and served on the Select Committee on Intelligence in the Senate. Haspel is a career CIA operative. Wray is serving for a second time as the FBI Director. Nakasone is a four-star Army general who has run Cyber Command & Second Army with tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Korea. Ashley is a three-star Army general who has spent most of his career in Army intelligence. Cardillo is a career intelligence officer.
And yet they jointly dared to challenge Trump’s opinions about, well, pretty much everything. The report doesn’t really say much that any literate person doesn’t already know: ISIS is still a treat, Iran isn’t currently building nuclear weapons, North Korea isn’t giving up nuclear weapons, China is still pursuing global superiority, Russia is still trying to influence U.S. elections, climate change is real, and our traditional allies are pretty pissed at us. I’m shocked!
In response, Trump tweeted that all of those testifying were “naive” and said that they “should go back to school!”
Seriously. The man who has never met an intelligence briefing that he’s actually read has the temerity to disparage the intellect of people with strong intelligence backgrounds who are running the intelligence agencies in his own remarkably anti-intellectual administration.
Can someone remind me again when we started just accepting this kind of crap as normal?