I believe that, when the history of the debacle that is the Donald Trump presidency is written, we may finally learn of the true role played by the U.S. Intelligence Community in helping to contain and finally derail the train wreck that is his administration.
In my estimation, Trump was already a marked man when he took his oath of office. A year and a half earlier, he had denounced Sen. John McCain, saying he was not a war hero because he had been a prisoner of war. Later, he insulted a Gold Star family whose son had died in combat, saying they didn't deserve his respect because "they sacrificed nothing." These remarkably disrespectful and unpatriotic comments must have been offensive to the tens of thousands of men and women who risk their lives every day -- and sometimes lose it -- in the service of their country. These people --unsung American heroes --expect, in the very least, that their country's leaders would always recognize and honor them for their acts of valor. Trump's words were the ultimate affront.
His comments must have been especially galling because he himself had notoriously avoided military service by claiming five deferments, four for college and one for bad feet.
Building a Wall
When Trump compared the U.S. Intelligence agencies to Nazi Germany, falsely accusing them of leaking a scandalous dossier on him to the media, the agencies must have started making phone calls to one other. In the days following his inauguration, they set their plans in motion after a speech he gave before the CIA's sacred Memorial Wall that commemorated 117 members killed in the line of duty. Rather than acknowledging their comrades' ultimate sacrifices, Trump praised himself and bragged about the size of his inauguration crowd, never once apologizing for having insulted all of the men and women standing before him, who had sacrificed and even died for their country. A disgusted CIA Director, John Brennan, who had resigned days earlier after Obama left office, called the speech, a "despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA's Memorial Wall of Agency heroes."
But Trump continued to insult at every turn, openly questioning the competency of the Intelligence Community over their reports of Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election. He fired and subsequently insulted their former leader, FBI Director James Comey, calling him a "nut job" to the very people who were confirmed enemies of America: Russian officials who were suspected spies. Worse, he did it in the Oval Office, where he also clumsily revealed highly sensitive military secrets, endangering the United States and its allies -- and he had a good laugh over it with them.
'Un-Presidented'
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