Trump Takes Aim at Intelligence Chiefs Via Tweet-Storm

Trump’s tweet-storm came just one day after his director of national intelligence, along with the directors of five other key intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI and NSA, delivered their annual Worldwide Threat Assessment to U.S. lawmakers.

In contrast to Trump’s tweets, and other previous public statements, the picture painted by the intelligence chiefs was grim, warning the United States was facing a “toxic mix” of threats and is in danger of seeing its global influence wane as key adversaries, like Russia and China, position themselves to fill the resulting void.

Their public, unclassified assessments on IS, North Korea and Iran also stood in stark contrast to the president’s past assertions, for example from December, when Trump said, “We have won against ISIS… We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly.”

“ISIS will continue to be a threat to the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told lawmakers Tuesday, saying the terror group “still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.

On North Korea, Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel reiterated long-standing concerns that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite being willing to talk with the U.S., is not truly ready to give up its nuclear ambitions.

“The regime is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States,” Haspel said.

As for the assessment of Iran, for which Trump labeled the U.S. intel chiefs as “wrong,” the differences between the intelligence agencies and the president appeared to be less glaring.

The intelligence officials told lawmakers that the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Tehran, which the president has repeatedly called a failure, is working, at least for now.

And Coats agreed with the president about the larger threat and concerns for a “long-term trajectory of Iranian influence in the region and the risk of conflict escalation.”​