I’m not sure Trump understands how the intelligence community actually works, as he just threw them under the bus:
Does Trump even understand that the problem we have is not our intelligence community, but the politicians making decisions with our intelligence? It’s they who are responsible for the mess in the Middle East, not our intelligence community. But he blames the intel community?
What’s even more interesting is that the very man Trump says he trusts, the man he’s bringing into his intelligence briefing, was a senior official for many years in the very intelligence community he is now throwing under the bus!
Flynn served as the assistant chief of staff, G2, XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from June 2001 and the director of intelligence, Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan until July 2002. He commanded the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade from June 2002 to June 2004.
Flynn was the director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command from July 2004 to June 2007, with service in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom). He served as the director of intelligence, United States Central Command from June 2007 to July 2008, as the director of intelligence, Joint Staff from July 2008 to June 2009, then the director of intelligence, International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from June 2009 to October 2010.
In September 2011, Flynn was promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. His duties included public, private, and international outreach and engagement. Flynn’s primary influence within the U.S. intelligence community was with regard to operational units across all the services, especially in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance arenas, as well as information technology and organizational design.
On April 17, 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Flynn to be the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn took command of the DIA in July 2012. In October 2012, Flynn announced plans to release his paper “VISION2020: Accelerating Change Through Integration”, a broad look at how the Defense Intelligence Agency must transform to meet the national security challenges for the 21st Century.
On April 30, 2014, Flynn announced his retirement effective later in 2014, about a year earlier than he had been scheduled to leave his position. He was reportedly effectively forced out of the DIA after clashing with superiors over his “management style” and vision for the agency. He retired as of August 7, 2014.
And let me remind the Trumpers, before they start chanting ‘Iraq WMDs’ as a defense of Trump, that the intelligence community was correct, that WMDs were indeed found in Iraq and Karl Rove helped cover them up!
Trump clearly doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about and, as usual, he just wings it and sticks his foot in his mouth!