President Donald Trump said that he respected the intelligence agencies but not the former prominent figures who made their careers into criticizing his presidency.
“It’s been terrible,” Trump told CBS anchor Jeff Glor, citing the names of former CIA director John Brennan, former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, Former Director of the National Security Agency Michael Hayden, former FBI director James Comey, as well as prominent FBI agents Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok.
The president responded to a question from Glor about whether or not he felt that former intelligence agents were “out to get him.” Trump said that he had difficulty trusting their judgement, as they stood vehmently against him.
“Certainly I can’t have any confidence in the past,” Trump said, citing the “all of the shenanigans that have gone on” in the intelligence community under former President Barack Obama.
“Very hard to have confidence in that group,” he added.
Trump said Brennan was “a total low-life” and that said that even though Clapper wrote him a “beautiful” letter when he first got into the presidency, he turned against him.
“All of a sudden, he’s gone haywire because they got to him and they probably, got him to say things that maybe he doesn’t even mean,” he said.
Trump said that he was confident in the present intelligence led by his own appointees such as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
“I can have a lot of confidence in the present and the future, because it’s getting to be now where we’re putting our people in,” he said.
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