Revenge of the Intelligence Nerds
On his first day in office, in January 2017, Donald Trump paid a visit to the CIA. He stood before its Memorial Wall, which then had 117 stars commemorating those who lost their lives in the line of duty. “I want to just let you know, I am so behind you,” Trump told the crowd of intelligence officials who’d gathered to hear him speak. “And I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted, and you’re going to get so much backing,” he said, just days after comparing U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis.
Then Trump joked about asking for a show of hands to see who in the room had voted for him. He went on a diatribe about the news media. He repeated lies, at length, about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. The blowback was swift. Former CIA directors were and . One U.S. official the visit “uncomfortable,” saying that it had “made relations with
