Former CIA Director John Brennan promised Friday “to continue to speak out loudly and critically” against President Donald Trump “until integrity, decency, wisdom — and maybe even some humility — return to the White House.”
Brennan, who headed the CIA under President Barack Obama, acknowledged in a Washington Post op-ed that “many have condemned my public criticism of Mr. Trump.”
“My criticisms, however, are not political; I have never been and will never be a partisan,” he wrote. “I speak out for the simple reason that Mr. Trump is failing to live up to the standards that we should all expect of a president.”
Brennan said the current administration “dealt a serious blow” to Brennan’s “esteem” of the presidential office.
“Mr. Trump, however, has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us,” he continued.
“Mr. Trump charts his every move according to a calculus of how it will personally help or hurt him,” because he wants “to win at all costs, irrespective of truth, ethics, decency and — many would argue — the law,” Brennan wrote.
While Trump wants to “short-circuit legitimate law enforcement investigations” and demonstrates a “fear” of special counsel Robert Mueller, the president can’t win on the foreign policy front either, pursuing “policies that are rooted in uninformed campaign promises” and destroy the legacies of his predecessors.
Brennan warned that “the impact of the Trump presidency will be felt for many years to come,” while “the damage also will be felt by “millions of Americans” because Trump has ignored “their concern about being left behind in a rapidly changing globalized world.”