Hrm. I'll believe the Intelligence Community when they do more than send out second hand tweets.

Still, it does take a special sort of idiot to get in a pissing match with the nation's spy network.

OK, a commenter on Wonkette won the day with this gem:

The Intelligence Community is freaking out because they now report to the kind of mentally unstable fascist dictator that they used to install in other countries.

Some of my fave dikileaks that’ve emerged:

1. Twitler gave hell to Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull because he didn’t bother with any kind of briefing and didn’t know that the Aussie “Liberal” party means liberal only in the economic sense–they’re actually Oz’s conservative right-wingers, and Turnbull is a former Goldman Sachs managing director/major league a$$hole.

2. Twitler staff constantly misspelled British PM Theresa May’s name as “Teresa” sans-the-h, apparently conflating her with a yuuugely-chested, notorious British porn star. You can’t make this shit up!!!

And these are (were?) our allies!

3. Thankfully, political rockstar and my backup huzband Justin "JTru" Trudeau skated outta there unscathed, though I’m sure dozens of people slipped hastily and covertly scribbled HELP ME messages to him on his way out the door.

John Schindler? You mean this guy? http://gawker.com/nsa-spook-turned-twitt…

And also this guy: http://blackbag.gawker.com/the-crazy-ema…

And also this guy: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201403…

Maybe take 30 seconds to Google their sources before believing every Raw Story article you read, is all I'm saying.

Yes, let's let the CIA pick our presidents for us. Excellent idea.

So the article starts out basically condemning Trump as a Russian stooge, saying that what Putin really wants is political chaos...then happily obliges by giving info for upcoming rallies and marches. Great!

The "Intelligence Community" is the greatest threat to American liberty on the planet.

Those who hope for impeachment and Trump's exit should remember that Pence will inherit the Presidency.

You idiots sound like Trump dismissing the intelligence community because they "all" got WMD in Iraq wrong. Like there's this monolithic thing that all says the same thing, and is either good or evil. Apparently always evil.

We need to replay what happened with Bush and Obama. Presidents are given a choice of scenarios, each with various facts and arguments. Bush let Cheney and Rumsfeld squelch intelligence and military factions that didn't fit their preconceived worldview. Bush always chose the dumbest option. Among other things, it's why he couldn't catch Osama bin Laden.

Obama was given the same arrays of options and range of voices. Some where better than others. He managed to make better choices. It's not magic: when you're smarter, better educated, and less biased, you tend to make better decisions. The reason Trump voter demographics so strongly correlate with opioid addiction and early death from heart disease is that they make bad choices in everything, not just voting.

Trump can't even win friends among those intelligence factions that support his warped agenda. He is a terrible leader, who throws people under the bus, humiliates them for kicks. And he has so much to hide. The CIA and NSA aren't choosing are President. They're letting Trump reap what he sows. Their alternative would be for hundreds of staff at levels up and down to stick their necks out, personally, to save this prick. Why would they do that?

The big question, is why is Paul Ryan doing that?

@9:

Yes, and it's increasingly likely he's going to inherit a highly dysfunctional Executive Branch which he's going to have to rebuild practically from the ground up. That means several more months (depending on when SCROTUS either bails or gets booted) of disorder, chaos, delays in implementing policy, etc., etc. And it's not like any of this is going to happen in the next few weeks; barring some "February Surprise" that completely turns the tables this could drag out for some time, while the GOP contingent in Congress continues to dither over the risk/reward assessment of allowing the ship of state to careen blindly from one crisis to the next, in hopes it'll somehow manage to work itself out. And who knows how much more damage will be done before they grow a spine and finally take action.

@1 you'll never get your day, but that's the point. Ultimately only our elected members of congress can actually hold Trump accountable for anything. Otherwise, the only final play the intelligence community has is to assassinate him.

8
NATO is not a baby in a basket left on the doorstep.
If Europe doesn't get off their asses and meet America halfway it is past-time they started fending for themselves.

Fucking Russian trolls.

The US providing a disproportionate amount of defense in Europe is the only way to prove that they are not alone. Any attack on them unavoidably involves the US. That's the point. Pulling our forces out out and telling each country to field bigger armies sends the clear message that our commitment there is nothing but words, easily broken. It's the easiest thing in the world to decide to hang back at a safe distance when somebody else is being invaded. Look at Crimea.

Which is the entire reason Putin's puppet keeps going on about "fair shares". When each country provides only for its own immediate, individual defense, nothing more, they're easy pickings.

And yet, Trump still has 3 years and 11 months left to his term in office.

7 years and 11 months, if Jill.Stein gets her way.

Will it be a Mexican prison? Because we could probably get Mexico to pay for it, then.

Yes, let's let the CIA pick our presidents for us. Excellent idea.

Would that be worse than or better than the FSB doing it?

@20 Good point. If only the FSB hadn't prevented Hillary from campaigning in Wisconsin, she would be president today!

@21

Seems to be something you're happy with, at any rate.

I'd like to see Trumpzilla, Pence AND Putin all three die together in prison. I vote for Gitmo, where Cheney loves to inflict torture.

C'mon, John Schindler is a nutbar. Dude has zero evidentiary value, and this is shit clickbait.

For someone who claims he's a married man, he wears no wedding band.

#25, I assume this is a serious comment, so i'll reply...so what? my wife and I don't wear wedding bands either. we had better things to spend out money on at the time, like weed and booze.

Even if you hate Trump, the idea that the intelligence community feels it should decide who runs the government should chill you to the very bone.

Trump is a buffoon whose time will eventually come to a close, and whose policies will eventually be done with. But if the intelligence community feels free to destroy democratically elected officials and their appointments for their own ends, then they feel that they are the true, unelected, and permanent government.

That is not how any republic or democracy is supposed to function.

The leakers need to be flushed out and given a cigarette and a blindfold. If they want to act like the Soviet KGB then treat them like spies and traitors are treated.

@ 27,

Our system of government failed years ago. It continuously produces disastrous outcomes by elevating openly corrupt, incompetent psychopaths to positions of power, and it leaves most people worse off every year as those in power work to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of everyone else.

The anti-democratic campaign finance/bribery schemes, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the installation of neo-fascist Twitler by the (s)Electoral College simply ripped the onion-skin mask off this charade.

I'm gay, and Twitler and the RepubliKKKans have vowed to destroy me and my family by declaring open season on us through legalizing religious based discrimination--First Amendment "Defense" Acts/state-sanctioned violence--and the appointment of judges that will invalidate my marriage. The Vice President believes we should be tortured into renouncing our innate sexual orientation.

There are tens of millions of us in this living nightmare, and if we find allies doing their constitutional duty by working to save us from a common enemy who's vowed to erase us, then we'd be insane not to support them.

@ 28,

So you don't care that the President and his top advisors may be colluding with Russia to destroy our country for their own financial gain?

That's the official RepubliKKKan position, apparently.

@29 I fail to see how moving power in secret behind closed doors and subverting any kind of input from citizenry will help any of that fever dream apocalypse fantasy you have though.

At least when we elect a shitheel, we know who the shitheel is. As of now...who knows?

Isn't what's happening now actually the JOB of our Intelligence Community? You know, that part of their mandate to "defend the nation from all enemies, both foreign AND domestic"?

@ 31,

We didn't elect neo-Nazi, white-supremacist, alcoholism postermonster Steve Bannon, yet he's running the show, so what's your point?

President Rapist has packed his White House and Cabinet with fascists, predatory billionaires, and internet troll conspiracy kooks. This entire regime is illegitimate and should be treated as such.

So some are concerned that “intelligence” is selectively leaking incriminating illegal activity by administration officials for some nefarious controlling agenda? How about not doing anything illegal in the first place?

I would be much more concerned if the leaked information truly jeopardized national security, like releasing the details of an agreement with a foreign power, or the names of undercover operatives. Don’t do anything embarrassing and you won’t be embarrassed.

The last time something like this happened the deputy director of the FBI Mark Felt was leaking all about private investigations. (This was clearly a huge tragedy for our nation that undercut our democratic system. /s) The reality is the intel folks are usually aggressively non-partisan. It wasn't by chance that the Evan McMullin who is leading conservative resistance to Trump is a former CIA Agent. They take an oath to the Constitution and take it seriously.

Additionally, it was mostly intelligence leaks and former intelligence agents with current contacts from where we knew about the problems with the WMD intel in 2002. It wasn't by accident that Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valrie Plame were attacked.

@34 ur: I second it--Original Andrew [@33] for the win.