Chuck Schumer moves for a Trump intervention
On Tuesday, the leaders of the U.S. intel community testified publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Donald Trump didn’t like the truthful answers that his own handpicked people gave, so on Wednesday morning he viciously ripped into them on Twitter, undermining the entire intel community in the process, and coming across like a mentally unstable person. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has had enough.
On Wednesday evening, Chuck Schumer announced that “It’s past time for U.S. Intelligence Community leaders to stage an intervention with Donald J. Trump.” He also posted a letter addressed to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who oversees the entire U.S. intel community.
Here’s the meat of Schumer’s letter: “I believe it is incumbent on you, Director Wray and Director Haspel to insist on an immediate meeting with the President to educate him about the facts and raw intelligence underlying the Intelligence Community assessments, and to impress upon him how critically important it is for him to join you and the leadership of our Intelligence Community in speaking with a unified and accurate voice about national security threats. He is putting you and your colleagues in an untenable position and hurting the national interest in the process. You must find a way to make that clear to him.”
This all seems obvious enough, but coming from the Senate Minority Leader, it’s stunning: he’s literally calling, in exact words, for U.S. intel leaders to stage an intervention with an out of control President of the United States. Palmer Report suggested earlier this evening that Senate Democrats were setting a trap for Trump, so he would attack the intel community and thus play himself for the fool.
