Nunes: ‘I don’t blame’ Trump for criticism of intel community
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Sunday it’s understandable that President Donald Trump “had a lot of problems” with “the highest level of the past administration.”
“And I don’t blame him for having a lot of problems. There were a lot of leaks,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“The fact remains that there were a lot of leaks that occurred over the course of the last 60 to 90 days, before this election, that most people can attribute back to somewhere within either the Obama administration directly or the intelligence community,” Nunes added.
{mosads}The president on Saturday visited the CIA headquarters, not long after accusing members of the intelligence community of leaking an unverified dossier that includes allegations Russia has compromising information on Trump and members of his administration.
Trump denied on that visit that he’s having a “feud” with the intelligence community and took the opportunity to blast the media for its coverage of the inaugural crowd sizes.
Former CIA Director John Brennan then apparently criticized Trump’s remarks.
“Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of the CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency Heroes,” former CIA deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro said in a series of tweets.
“Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself.”
Nunes, when asked about the feud Sunday, said Brennan is entitled to his own opinion.
He then criticized the media for not focusing on Trump’s more “major statements” from the standup.
“But what people are not talking about, which I thought Donald Trump said some things that were really important yesterday, he showed an understanding that the CIA is the tip of the spear. When the CIA gets things right, fewer people will die. He called radical Islamic terrorists, terrorists.
He said that they are going to go out and kill the jihadists around the world. They are going to be eliminated. Those were major statements that he made yesterday that nobody is covering.”
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
