President Trump has renewed his attacks on his own intelligence officials, one day after the government’s national security chiefs publicly disputed a number of Trump’s assertions about global threats.
But starting today, for the first time in Trump’s presidency, those officials will have political backup, because we control this little old thing called the House Intelligence Committee.
At an annual threat-assessment hearing before the Senate Intelligence Community, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and several other intelligence agency leaders contradicted Trump’s assertions that:
- The U.S. has defeated ISIS
- Russia isn’t meddling in U.S. elections
- There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea
- That Iran is violating the terms of the nuclear deal
Trump responded by calling the “intelligence people” “extremely passive.” “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Reminder that the last time Trump was in school he was mostly focused on taking his father’s money and being rejected by Candice Bergen.
In the past, Trump has been able to turn the page on these kinds of damaging stories by waiting out the news cycle, because he knew Republicans in Congress would refuse to do anything about them (looking at you, Intel Committee member and selective-attention-haver Marco Rubio).
Beginning today, Trump can no longer count on that. For weeks, Republicans had declined to appoint any members to the House Intelligence Committee, which made it impossible for the committee to do much of anything.
Now that Republicans have relented, Democrats can use their power to make sure Trump doesn’t shrug off damning revelations like he did his first two years. We hope.
Chairman Adam Schiff has promised to make transcripts of Russia investigation interviews available to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Schiff can invite the intelligence chiefs back for more testimony, so that Trump can't duck their damning testimony with taunts and insults. As our Jon Favreau might say, turns out electing a Democratic House really mattered.
On today’s Pod Save the World, Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes discussed the threat-assessment hearings and the crisis in Venezuela →
