So here, Trump is claiming that intelligence officials told President Obama to do. something. and instead he did something else.
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Hayden predicted that National Intelligence Director James Clapper will be inclined to “let this pass”.
“I think what he said was totally inappropriate and undisciplined”, she said. “I’m pretty good with the body language”.
The current kerfuffle started on Wednesday night at the Commander-in-Chief presidential forum, when moderator Matt Lauer asked the Republican candidate if he had heard anything that surprised him during his two intelligence briefings.
The comments prompted immediate criticism from all corners of the intelligence and political words due to the fact, according to myriad government officials, that the officials leading the briefings would have never revealed any personal opinions or policy recommendations and because Trump was speaking at all about the contents of the top secret sessions.
“I hope that they don’t tell him anything”.
Corker complained that Tapper’s question put him in a “personality referee position, which is not a position that I should be in or want to be in”.
In August, Trump began receiving intelligence briefings, which NBC News described as a description of “how U.S. intelligence agencies see a variety of global issues”. The source offered as an example Obama’s 2014 reference to ISIS as a “JV team”, when many in the intelligence community regarded it as a strong and growing threat.
Flynn and Christie both accompanied Trump to the August 17 briefing – typically provided to all major party nominees following their nominating conventions.
Trump’s claims about his briefings weren’t his first apparent inconsistency on intelligence matters.
Last month, the day before his first briefing, Mr Trump said he didn’t really trust intelligence provided by “the people who have been doing it for our country”.
“Donald Trump, in a very, very sophisticated way, was asking tough questions and they would back off and say, that is not our job”.
Trump also took aim at the top tier of United States military leaders Wednesday night, saying they’d been “reduced to rubble” by Obama.
LAUER: Did you learn anything in that briefing, again, not going into specifics, that makes you reconsider some of the things you say you can accomplish like defeating ISIS quickly? “The comments and actions attributed to me in this story about General Flynn are categorically untrue”.
There are historical precedents for presidents handing their generals pink slips, but Trump wouldn’t be able to simply slot in replacements on his own: Generals have to be approved by the Senate.
“They didn’t want to talk to us about it, as is their usual response”, she said then.
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Leighton added, “It could be potentially disruptive to the services”.
