In another bizarre day of presidential behavior, Donald Trump showed up at the CIA Saturday, where he gave a speech allegedly to mend fences with the group he has maligned the most, but he predictably veered off into campaign mode instead.
But while standing in front of the stars of our fallen, anonymous agents, Trump decided to make it all about him again and even blamed the media for creating the conflict between our new president and the intelligence community.
Trump started off by bashing the media and said, "I always call them “the dishonest media”, but they treated me nicely." WTF does that mean?
After saying how America should have stolen Iraq's oil again (Wait, WHAT?), he decided to blame the media for creating the rift he has with our intelligence services.
So I can only say that I am with you 1000%. And the reason you’re my first stop is that as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. [laughter, applause] And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop is exactly the opposite. Exactly. And they understand that too...
It was Trump's own words and tweets about Russian, Iraq war and blaming the CIA for being leakers of his two page dossier that has caused the friction, not the media.
Then he spent about half his time crying about the media coverage of his inauguration ceremony.
I'm no fan of Director John Brennan, but when he's right, he's right:
Former CIA deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro said Brennan believes that Trump "should be ashamed of himself" for his "display of self-aggrandizement."
“Former CIA director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald 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,” Shapiro said in a pair of tweets.
As usual, Trump believes he knocked it out of the ball park with his visit to the CIA.
CNN's Jim Sciutto expressed a different take after Trump finished speaking.
On CNN after the speech, Jim Sciutto expressed shock that Trump could stand in a place that is so meaningful to the CIA, the CIA Memorial Wall in Langley, Virginia, and go on a tangent about media coverage, Fox News, Reince Priebus, and more.
"I'll just speak from this point: As a journalist who has covered the intelligence community for a long time, I’m just amazed at that kind of commentary from the President in that spot at this time.”
He expressed the sentiment from the agents and said, "they certainly want to hear support, they're not seen as a political body as the president in his own public comments accused him of being, They heard some perfunctory comments in that direction; but it wasn't what they were expecting or hoping to hear from him."
“It was a campaign rally,” said Gloria Borger. “That’s not what you expect at the CIA.”
