Update:
While many are still aghast at Trump’s unbelievably insensitive, self-obsessive, self-promoting remarks to CIA officers while standing in front of the CIA’s hallowed Memorial Wall, some see a silver lining: Several agency veterans said, according to David Ignatius at the Washington Post, they were glad that Trump seemed to have “stopped demonizing the intelligence community…”
Quite a silver lining when we are talking about an agency, a community, critical to our nation’s security.
Below are some of Trump’s inappropriate remarks at CIA headquarters.
Absent, however, are what Ignatius finds to be “the more disturbing part of his address: “[Trump’s] attempt to treat agency employees, whose mission is supposed to transcend elections, as political soul mates, along with military and law enforcement.”
Ignatius quotes Trump:
You know, the military and the law enforcement generally speaking … gave us tremendous percentages of votes. We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military. Probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. But I would guarantee a big portion. Because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks.
Read more here.
Original Post:
As one of his first official acts, the newly elected president of the United States visited the men and women who serve our country at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — the men and women “who are serving in harm’s way right now and their families who are worried about them…”
After having attacked, denigrated and dishonored these men and women for political reasons, after having said or implied — as CIA Director John Brennan said — that these brave men and women are “akin to Nazi Germany,” the president certainly needed to try to mend fences, to apologize.
Of course, this president would never apologize, but he did travel to CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to talk to the members of the CIA.
He did stand in front of the hallowed “CIA Memorial Wall,” a white Vermont marble Wall carved with 117 stars, each one representing a member who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of his or her country.
Speaking in front of that Wall, he did commend the officers for their dedicated and dangerous work and he did promise to give the intelligence community his full support — “one thousand percent.”
But the president, standing in front of that Hallowed Wall honoring intelligence officers killed while serving the US, also:
Described reporters as “the most dishonest human beings on earth, right?”
Accused the media of lying about the size of the crowds that had gathered for his inauguration on the National Mall, saying they were misleading and that photos showed far fewer people than the “actual” 1.5 million people he claimed his inauguration drew.
Called a report that a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office false — rightly so.
Bragged, “probably everybody in this room voted for me … because we’re all on the same wavelength.”
Small-talked about and misrepresented what happened to the weather during his swearing in claiming “God looked down” on him.
Claimed to “know a lot about West Point,” that his uncle was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and “I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics…They say, ‘Is Donald Trump an intellectual?’ Trust me. I’m, like, a smart person.”
Waxed about feeling like a young man, “I feel like I’m 30, -35, 39. Somebody said, ‘Are you young?’ I said, ‘I think I’m young.’”
All this while standing in front of a Hallowed Memorial Wall honoring 117 CIA officers who died in the line of service for our country.
Former CIA Director John Brennan perhaps put this whole unfortunate affair in the best perspective. His former deputy chief of staff, Nick Shapiro. said today, “Former CIA Dir Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes. Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself.”
