There’s been a lot of reporting in recent days about President Donald Trump’s insults to his intelligence chiefs after their annual address to Congress contradicted just about everything the president has said about our country’s foreign relations.
The chiefs – Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christoper Wray – each year prepare a federally mandated report titled “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” and their assessments are notably 180 degrees opposite of what Trump has said recently about China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Mexico, the drug trade – you name it.
The intelligence chiefs told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities. Trump says they have already disarmed. The chiefs say Iran continues to make trouble in the Middle East but is not currently undertaking key nuclear weapons development. Trump says it is. Russia and China are still acting like the disruptors they have always been. Trump defends them and relaxes sanctions against them. ISIS still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria and will keep attacking. Trump has declared ISIS dead and gone. Global warming is intensifying extreme weather. Trump says he doesn’t believe it.
Our president hasn’t bothered to meet with any Democrats as the clock ticks down on the 15-day shutdown pause, but he found time to tweet and tweet and tweet about the intelligence chiefs’ message and report.
“They are wrong!” he insisted in one message. “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” he said in another. And, of course, he tweeted about immigration: “Three separate caravans marching to our Border “