| | | Trump: I Like "Taking On Voices" Like John Brennan's, Now People Will Find Out Who He Is
Posted By Tim Hains
On Date August 19, 2018
President Trump rejects the suggestion that revoking former CIA Director John Brennan's security clearance is an attempt to silence a vocal critic. "If anything I'm giving him a bigger voice," the president said.
"Many people don't even know who he is," Trump said about Brennan, the director of the CIA from 2013 until January 2017.
John Brennan's national security career | Courtesy of Wikipedia:
Beginning in 1996, Brennan was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen. He became a deputy director in 2001, and served as director of the newly created "Terrorist Threat Integration Center" from 2003 to 2004, an office that sifted through and compiled information for President Bush's daily top secret intelligence briefings. In 2009, Brennan became the Obama administration's Homeland Security Advisor and in 2012, Brennan was the first American official to publicly acknowledge CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Two of the strikes acknowledged that day killed radical Yemeni-American imam Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son. They were the first American citizens to be killed by drone strike without due process. Brennan defended the legality, morality, and effectiveness of the program at the time. Brennan was reportedly the principal author of the "kill lists" used to pick drone targets. In 2014, Brennan faced scrutiny after it was revealed that CIA employees had hacked the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee during their investigation into the Bush administration's torture programs. After the spying incident, Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) stated he had "lost confidence in Brennan." In March 2018 Brennan said President Trump had "paranoia", accused him of "constant misrepresentation of the facts", and described him as a "charlatan."
"Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey... we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived," Brennan said to Trump after his meeting with Russian President Putin in July 16, 2018, and tweeted:
@JohnBrennan: Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors". It was nothing short of "treasonous". Not only were Trump's comments "imbecilic", he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
President Trump responded on Twitter by calling Brennan a "total lowlife."
On July 23, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accused Brennan of making money from his security clearance in his capacity as a cable news talking head and called for Brennan's clearance to be revoked. Adding in a second tweet, Paul said, "Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!" A few weeks later, that has occurred.
"Now he has a bigger voice, and that's okay with me," the president said Saturday afternoon on his way from the White House to New Jersey. "I like taking on voices like that. I've never respected him, I've never had a lot of respect. And Senator Burr said it best, if [Brennan] knew anything, why didn't he report it?"
"This just came up lately," Trump said about the security clearance issue, "and it is a disgusting thing, frankly. I say it, I say it again. That whole situation is a rigged witch hunt, it is a rigged deal. They should be looking at the other side, all the people that got fired by them. They should be looking at Bruce Ohr, and his wife Nellie, for dealing with, by the way, indirectly, Russians. They should be looking at Steele. They should be looking at all these FBI guys who got fired and demoted. It's a really weird-- It is not us. It is a rigged witch hunt, I've said it for a long time." |
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