Trump Makes Bizarre Courtesy Call At CIA Headquarters
ByLAUREN FOXPublishedJANUARY 21, 2017, 4:38 PM EDT
A presidential speech that was intended to thank the intelligence community quickly went off the rails Saturday as Donald Trump talked about himself, his inauguration crowd, the dishonest media and how great his party was.
Trump appeared at the CIA on his first official day as the 45th president after a rough few weeks where he'd heavily criticized the agency, blamed it for leaks and questioned their assessment that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election. In a brief 15-minute statement, Trump meandered, but without the kind of discipline or grace one might expect from the commander in chief.
"I am so behind you and I know maybe sometimes you haven't gotten the backing that you've wanted and you're going to get so much backing," Trump told the intel community with whom he has feuded. "Maybe you'll say, 'don't give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we don't need that much backing,' But you're going to have that, and I think everybody in this room knows it."
It seemed at every turn, Trump would pivot to himself. As he talked about his choice to lead the CIA Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Trump noted that he himself was smart. "I met him and I said, he is so good. Number one in his class at West Point. I know a lot about West Point, and I'm a person that very strongly believes in academics. In fact, every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at M.I.T. for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many ways," Trump said. "He was an academic genius, and then they say, there's Donald Trump, an intellectual, trust me, I'm like a smart person."
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