'Russia Couldn't Ask For Anything Better' Than Our Democracy In Chaos

Joy Reid discusses the DNI shake-up with Clint Watts and Natasha Bertrand, who delivers some alarming news about the Worldwide Threats Hearing.

 

By Aliza Worthington

 

 

We know Trump never reads, or even receives his daily security briefings. We know he cannot handle anything even tangentially related to the fact that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, and is likely planning to interfere again. We know Trump regularly derides and dismisses our seventeen highly esteemed security agencies set up specifically to protect our democracy and its citizens from harm.

The latest proof came on Thursday, when Trump fired director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. Trump fired him because Maguire briefed House Intelligence Committee members on the information he had about Russia's plans to interfere in our 2020 elections — that they are, in fact, carrying out those plans right now. Clint Watts and Natasha Bertrand joined Joy Reid Thursday evening to discuss the blaring alarm sirens all of these moves are sounding. Reid asked if there was reporting that showed Trump actively wanted Russia's help, and in answering the question, Bertrand dropped an additional piece of jaw-dropping info:

 

BERTRAND: So we don't have the reporting that suggests that the resident has told aides for example that he really wants Russia to interfere because he thinks it going to help him, right? So far what we've heard is he gets enraged because he thinks it questions the legitimacy of his election in 2016, and potential reelection in 2020. I this I what a lot of former national security and intel experts are telling us is that they're concerned that the intel community now is self-censoring, that they're going into these briefings with Congress, and intel officials are actually holding back on the real threats that are posed by Russia with regard to helping Trump win reelection this year. [...]
[T]he senior officials that are already in place, that are career officials, are actually holding back information because they fear a political backlash from the resident. The Worldwide Threats Hearing that is a tradition every year, public by the intel officials to tell the public what the national threats are, the biggest national security threats to this country are, that has been cancelled because the intel leaders of this country are afraid of backlash from this resident and that's a really bad precedent to set, these former experts tell me, and former officials tell me, because it will ultimately make it so that the intel community does not feel comfortable telling the resident things he does not want to hear.

Not only are security officials NOT telling Trump information about threats to our nation, they're now afraid to tell this information to Congress, because they know the info will get back to Trump, who will fly into a tantrum and fire career security experts only to replace them with cronies who have zero experience in anything but kissing Trump's ass.

To top it all off, now we have the yearly Worldwide Threats Hearing cancelled? The one hearing that keeps the citizens and Congress informed about the threats our security agencies consider most dire, requiring the highest levels of attention? IN ORDER TO KEEP US SAFE?

Cancelled. Because of Trump's tiny-brained, snowflake-melting, fragile, weak-ass ego.