On Saturday, newly inaugurated President Trump went to visit the CIA. Things went so amazing, you’ve never seen things go so amazing the way Trump can make things go amazing.
Wow. The intelligence community that seems to be pretty sure that the man standing in front of them is being used by a foreign, and frequently hostile nation’s leadership? Well, I guess I was wrong about Donald Trump. The guy is making everyone excited! Or, he’s not. He’s just a clueless, arrogant asshole.
The 400 agency staffers were standing when Trump entered the room, were still standing when he came to the lectern, and then remained standing through his 15 minutes of remarks.
“You know that the CIA will not sit down until the president tells them to,” said Yael Eisenstat, who spent more than half of her 13-year career in counterterrorism and intelligence work at the agency.
Of course this happened. Donald Trump is so used to the narcissistic mirror chamber that is standing room only events that he just assumes standing ovations for everything he says.
Even more offensive to many in the intelligence world than Trump’s lack of understanding about protocol, though, was the content of his remarks ― a rambling, campaign-style speech that attacked the news media for their coverage of the inauguration, a boast about his own intellect, and a claim that almost everyone in the room had voted for him ― all of it while standing in front of a memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA agents who have died in the line of duty over the decades.
“Unbelievable,” Wilson said. “It’s like going to do standup in Arlington Cemetery. I know how much that wall means to the people in the agency. I know how sacred that space is. It was a graceless display.”
Remember how media outlets talked about Trump’s “ability to read a room?” Yeah, that was the traditional media being fucking .