The mainstream media seems unable to let go of the story of President Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters. The visit occurred Saturday. On Tuesday, Wolf Blitzer was still pushing the tired notion that the new president committed an outrage by visiting the CIA and, in the course of praising the men and women who work there, also talking about the size of the inauguration crowd.
Blitzer’s guests claimed that the former CIA officials they spoke to were incensed that Trump had bragged about crowd size while standing near the CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes. They channeled former director Brennan, a bitter enemy of Trump, who purported to be “deeply saddened and angered” about this.
The salient point is that the alleged sadness and anger comes from “former CIA officials.” It was evident that the men and women who still work at the Agency responded enthusiastically, by and large, to Trump’s visit.
And why not? As I said in my initial post, here was the new president, on his first full day in office, taking the time to visit CIA headquarters and praise the agency. By contrast, Barack Obama spent his first day setting the stage for releasing terrorists from Gitmo.
And here’s a key point I forgot to make. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder reopened cases against some CIA officers that the Justice Department had already deemed unworthy of prosecution. Holder did so without even reading the memoranda prepared by career prosecutors. Naturally, as Jack Goldsmith showed in his book Power and Constraint, morale at the CIA suffered.
CIA agents know that Trump would never allow this sort of mistreatment. For most, this reality surely outweighs Trump’s bragging about crowd size.
The CIA is a big place. It is populated by lots of Democrats, lots of Republicans, and some who are apolitical. But my sources assure me that a great many at the CIA and elsewhere in the intel world are delighted to be free of Obama’s needless, excessive constraints.
This helps explain the obvious enthusiasm CIA employees manifested when Trump visited. But some in the mainstream media are in denial about this.
At Sean Spicer’s news briefing on Monday, a reporter aggressively suggested that the enthusiasm was imported — the product of people Trump brought with him to Langley. Spicer said that Trump brought only about ten people, and they couldn’t possibly have accounted for the strongly positive reaction from the crowd.
The reporter said he had been told that Trump supporters were seated up front to help create the illusion of enthusiasm. Spicer said he didn’t think this was the case, but would have it checked.
One of his aides checked on the spot. As a result, Spicer was able to tell the reporter that there were no Trump people in the front row.
The reporter then asked about the second and third rows. After some checking, the answer was the same — no Trump people in those rows either.
Mercifully, Spicer was not asked to investigate rows four and five.
Give me a break. The mainstream media never showed concern for morale at the CIA when Obama was releasing terrorists and Holder was persecuting agents. The mainstream media isn’t concerned about it now. The mainstream media is just looking for ways to bash President Trump.
I’m not a fan of Trump. But the media’s relentless drumbeat against the U.S. president, based on whatever trivia presents itself on a given day, makes me sick.
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