![]() ![]() The reference to “restraint” appeared to be a reference to Obama ending the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, something Trump has repeatedly endorsed restarting and about which his pick to run the CIA has sent mixed messages. Trump suggested that “sometimes you haven’t always gotten the backing” from the White House, suggesting Obama had “restrained” the agency, and said to laughter and applause: “You’re going to say, ‘Please don’t give us so much backing.’” Trump press secretary Sean Spice claims ‘dishonest’ media misrepresented inauguration crowd size Guardian It is exactly the opposite,” Trump said, adding: “I love you, I respect you, there is nobody I respect more.” “They made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence agencies. The CIA crowd applauded Trump’s derisive comments about the press. Yet at Langley on Saturday, Trump said nothing at all about the Russia assessment, and insisted that the “dishonest” media had invented a dispute with the intelligence community that he persistently and publicly waged. ![]() Trump went so far as to liken the agency to Nazi Germany, a statement that astonished intelligence veterans.īrennan recently told the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s comparison was “very repugnant” and crossed “the line”. While he struck a conciliatory tone after that meeting, he wrongly accused the agency of leaking an incendiary and unverified dossier filled with rumored ties to Russia that multiple news organizations had long possessed. In January, ahead of meeting with the outgoing intelligence leadership, he told the New York Times the focus on Russian intrusions in the election was a “ political witch-hunt”. Brennan participated in an assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 election for Trump’s benefit.īeginning in December, Trump rejected the CIA assessment, claiming it was produced by “ the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction”. Trump’s associates are under a counterintelligence investigation to determine the nature of their ties with Russia, an inquiry that includes the CIA. The three-decade agency veteran added: “Trump should be ashamed of himself.” Through a spokesman, John Brennan proclaimed himself “deeply saddened and angered at Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement”. The speech’s tone, contrasting with the solemnity typically shown to the CIA memorial, prompted the just-retired director of the agency to proclaim his disgust. ![]() Any feud between himself and the agency was the result of a dishonest press corps, the president astonished some by saying. Trump vowed “a thousand percent” support for an intelligence corps he has repeatedly and publicly insulted – including recently likening intelligence officials to “Nazi Germany” – and suggested they would have an open checkbook in his White House. Traveling to CIA headquarters in Virginia in what the White House pointed out was Trump’s first official act in office, Trump stood before the agency’s memorial to its dead officers and delivered an often self-referential and highly political speech that included an untruthful claim that his inauguration was better attended than those of Barack Obama.
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