President Trump is convinced he knows more about the world than his intelligence chiefs. and today said they should “go back to school” and lectured their “naive” assessments.
This after they sharply contradicted his foreign policy claims, on North Korea, ISIS, Iran and the need for a border wall at the Mexican border.
Trump’s response to his chiefs testimony before the Senate yesterday was an unprecedented Twitter dressing down of America’s top intelligence officials, where he called them “extremely passive and naive.”
He railed against FBI directory Christopher Wray, CIA director Gina Haspel, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who painted a different picture of America’s relationship with its foreign partners when they testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019
….a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019
Trump mixed up “their” with “there” in the same tweet where he said “intelligence should go back to school.”
He spent the morning in a defensive twitter storm about his foreign policy initiatives after Coats argued North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons – in contrast to the president’s claim of success after his summit with Kim Jong-Un – and CIA director Gina Haspel warned ISIS was still dangerous after Trump claimed they had been beaten.
Additionally Coats, in his testimony, had a different take on one of Trump’s key assertions on Iran – that it had cheated on the spirit of the 2015 nuclear agreement. The president has argued Iran is still a nuclear threat.
Coats appeared to contradict that when he said Tehran was complying with the deal – even after Trump announced America’s withdrawal from it in May – and isn’t taking any steps toward a nuclear weapon.
‘We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device,’ he said.
The divergent views of a president and his intelligence agencies may diminish trust from the public and from American allies about United States foreign policy goals. The disparities could also discourage Americans from working in the intelligence field.
“People risk their lives for the intelligence he just tosses aside on Twitter,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said of Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was dangerous for the president to dismiss the findings of his own intelligence agencies.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent Trump critic who had his security clearance revoked by the president, retweeted Trump’s criticism and told the president: ‘All Americans, especially members of Congress, need to understand the danger you pose to our national security.’