Trump's Most Important New Partner: The Intelligence Community by Michael V. Hayden, Washington Post
I don’t envy the president-elect’s intelligence briefers. Candidate Donald Trump stormed through the election as a primal force of dystopia, anger and accusation. More often than not, there was little effort to back up accusations with fact. Many of them were, in fact, not true.
Hence, we were told we could “take out” terrorists’ families because the 9/11 hijackers’ families were aware of the attack and fled North America just before the hijackings. And that the president of the United States actually “founded ISIS”; he didn’t make errors in policy and set the conditions for the Islamic State terrorist group to emerge, he founded it. And Mexicans (rapists, mostly) are still streaming across our southern border. Most Muslims “hate us.” (Check out that 9/11 celebratory video from New Jersey.)
Then the candidate disregarded intelligence that Russia was hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee, claiming, “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC” and “Our country has no idea.”
With that record, a fair question is: What role will facts and fact-bearers play in the Trump administration? What happens when he is told that Syrian refugees are already extremely vetted? Or when his intel briefer dishes up that the Russians really aren’t targeting the Islamic State? …