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“We must be ready,” said DNI Coats at today’s intelligence hearing. He said again, “we must be ready.” IC officials’ testimony seemed disconnected from the administration they serve, as if they had been speaking and no one was listening. voanews.com/amp/4764337.ht…
As observers like @lrozen & @ZcohenCNN are pointing out tonight, the world is moving on while the President watches TV. Allies’ confidence in the United States is weakening, adversaries are starting to work together, Chinese influence is expanding without effective US response.
It’s not only the intelligence agencies trying to do their jobs knowing that the White House & senior agency officials aren’t listening. It’s not a different perspective they confront, but entitled indifference.
America will have lost a lot by the time the Trump administration ends, but perhaps the most important thing we’re losing is time. Time to maintain regional military balance; time to preserve the international economic order and arrest the decay of free institutions;...
...time to prepare for natural disasters and epidemics; time to keep climate change from imposing itself on human civilization in ways we won’t be able to fix later if action is not taken now. A large part of the American government was just shut down for over a month...
...because the President dislikes Hispanics and thought his poll numbers would improve if he held out for funding a wall to keep more of them out of the country. His entire Party backed him throughout. This is not the way a serious country’s government acts.
Time, in human affairs, is a finite commodity. The nation, and even more the great power is foolish that does not value the time it is given. The United States in the age of Trump is throwing away time, recklessly, in great chunks. We won’t get it back. [end]
Reinforcing this message is a @sam_vinograd thread. The CNN analyst discusses impact of the President’s predictable morning rage-tweeting against American intelligence agencies, who are not telling him what he wants to hear.
