Yesterday morning, FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Their testimony was timed to coincide with the public release of the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” which was authored by Coates, with the input of every other U.S. intelligence agency. This report, it’s important to note, contradicted President Trump on several fronts. First and foremost, no mention was made, in the entire 42 pages of the report, of a terrorist threat on our southern border which would necessitate the building of a wall. Furthermore, in the words of the New York Times, the report makes clear that, according to the consensus of our intelligence community, “North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear stockpiles, and Iran is not, for now, taking steps necessary to make a bomb, directly contradicting the rationale of two of President Trump’s foreign policy initiatives.” Additionally, the authors of the report make it clear that the most significant threat facing our nation today is the cyber threat posed by Russia and China, which, according to the threat assessment, were now “more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.”
Here, with more on the cyber threat posed by the likes of Russia, China, and Iran, is an excerpt from Politico.
In a worldwide threat assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats wrote that competitors such as Russia, China and Iran “probably already are looking to the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests.”
In his statement, he predicted that these countries “will use online influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine U.S. alliances and partnerships and shape policy outcomes in the United States and elsewhere.”
Furthermore, he said, they’ll “refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences, suggesting the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.”
Donald Trump, as you might imagine, replied by tweet, calling those behind this global threat assessment “naive,” adding later that they “should go back to school.” Here is Trump’s tweet, as well as the heated response it got from former CIA Director John Brennan.
Your refusal to accept the unanimous assessment of U.S. Intelligence on Iran, No. Korea, ISIS, Russia, & so much more shows the extent of your intellectual bankruptcy. All Americans, especially members of Congress, need to understand the danger you pose to our national security. https://t.co/9iV3BTKiEv
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) January 30, 2019
Interestingly, as all of this was playing out, the Financial Times was reporting that, according to high-level Russian sources, Donald Trump met secretly with Vladimir Putin during the 2018 G20 summit in Buenos Aires, accompanied solely by his wife, “with no translator or note-taker from the US side to record the dialogue between the leaders.” This, as I’m sure you can appreciate, is not even remotely normal.
While Lou Dobbs on Fox News is arguing that the role of the U.S. intelligence community should not be to deliver accurate, unbiased intelligence, but to provide intelligence that supports the worldview of the President, I’m starting to get the sense that others on the right have had about enough. According to new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News, 1 in 3 Republican and Republican-leaning voters would like for the GOP to nominate “someone other” than Trump in 2020, and Republican Senator Susan Collins is making news today for refusing to say whether or not she’d support a Trump reelection bid… Now here’s that Lou Hobbs segment.
#DrainTheSwamp – @FredFleitz: I would fire Dan Coats because of his assessment. This intelligence service has evolved into a monster that is second-guessing @POTUS all the time. @realDonaldTrump has to stop these unclassified worldwide threat briefings. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/NCzfAZZNlQ
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 30, 2019
