President Donald Trump returned fire against Obama-era intelligence chief James Clapper on Thursday morning, accusing the former spy of perjuring himself in testimony to Congress.
‘James Clapper, who famously got caught lying to Congress, is now an authority on Donald Trump. Will he show you his beautiful letter to me?’ Trump said in a tweet that made reference to Clapper’s mea culpa in 2013 that he made a ‘clearly erroneous’ statement to Congress about domestic spying.
Clapper maintains that he ‘made a mistake’ when he denied that the NSA was collecting data on millions of U.S. citizens but ‘did not lie’ in congressional testimony.
The former Director of National Intelligence attracted Trump’s attention this week when he questioned the president’s fitness for office after his rant-filled screed of a speech in Phoenix Tuesday night.
‘I worry about, frankly, you know, the access to the nuclear codes,’ Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon.
He also labeled Trump’s fiery rhetoric ‘downright scary and disturbing.’
President Donald Trump returned fire against Obama-era intelligence chief James Clapper on Thursday morning, accusing the former spy of perjuring himself in testimony to Congress
The former Director of National Intelligence attracted Trump’s attention this week when he questioned the president’s fitness for office after his rant-filled screed of a speech in Phoenix Tuesday night
‘I worry about, frankly, you know, the access to the nuclear codes,’ Clapper told CNN ‘s Don Lemon
Clapper had previously accused Trump of ‘making Russia great again’ by waffling on the election meddling that U.S. intelligence agencies have definitively said was ordered by the Kremlin.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly cited testimony Clapper gave to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in May that his agency saw ‘no evidence’ of collusion between the sitting president’s national campaign and Vladimir Putin’s government in declarations of his innocence.
The president’s attack on Clapper’s validity today is at odds with past arguments that the ex-spy’s testimony should be basis enough for the government to put an end to its probe into his alleged ties to the foreign government.
‘When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?’ Trump said in a May 12 tweet, for instance.
A longtime official in the intelligence community, Clapper joined CNN as a contributor earlier this month. He slammed Trump Wednesday for what he called ‘Jekyll-Hyde business’ and reiterated his assessment that Trump’s pattern of behavior is ‘disturbing.’
‘He’ll make a scripted teleprompter speech, which is good, and then turn around and negate it by sort of, unbridled, unleashed, unchaperoned Trump. And that to me — that pattern — is very disturbing,’ Clapper told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.
In candid analysis Tuesday of Trump’s remarks at a rally that evening in Arizona Clapper told the network’s Lemon that he didn’t even know where to begin.
‘It’s just so objectionable on so many levels,’ Clapper said.
He reminded the CNN host that he had worked for every president starting with John F. Kennedy and ending with Barack Obama, in some capacity.
James Clapper (right) joined CNN’s Don Lemon (left) and said found President Trump’s speech in Phoenix ‘downright scary and disturbing’
‘And I don’t know when I’ve listened and watched something like this from a president that I found more disturbing having some understanding of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them,’ Clapper said.
Echoing what Democrat Bakari Sellers had said earlier on the network, Clapper said the contents of Trump’s speech weren’t much of a surprise.
‘It is interesting to contrast last night’s teleprompter Trump performance versus tonight, which is, of course, the real Trump,’ Clapper pointed out. ‘Just as it was in the unglued, impromptu press conference at Trump Tower.’
‘So I find this very disturbing,’ Clapper added.
Clapper was referring to the press conference that took place a week before Tuesday night’s rally in which the president assigned some blame for violence in Charlottesville to the protesters gathered in the Virginia town to call out racists, including neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump, again, brought up Charlottesville during his speech Tuesday night.
‘I hit ’em with neo-Nazi, I hit ’em with everything. KKK? We have KKK. I got ’em all,’ Trump said, trying to argue that he had thoroughly called out white supremacist groups, despite the fact that it took him two days.
He also suggested that there were ‘weak, weak people’ calling for Confederate statues to be removed.
‘They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history,’ the president argued.
Clapper told Lemon he was questioning Trump’s fitness for office.
‘And I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for – maybe he is looking for a way out,’ Clapper guessed.
The CNN guest then turned on Trump’s fans.
‘I do wonder as well the people attracted to this rally … what are they thinking?’ he asked. ‘Or why am I so far off base?’
‘Because I don’t understand the adulation,’ he stated.