Former CIA Chief: Trump ‘Is Not A Patriot’

Former acting CIA director Michael Morell, who served under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said Thursday that Donald Trump’s self-adoration precludes the possibility of him being a true patriot.

Speaking with reporters about Trump’s connections to Russia, Morell stated, “He cares more about himself than anything else, including his nation. The definition of a patriot is someone who puts his nation above everything else in his life. In that regard, Donald Trump is not a patriot.” He added, “The positions that he has taken … are positions that are 100 percent in line with his business interests. The American people have a right to know what these businesses are and whether or not his policies are influenced by those business interests.”

Morell managed the staff that produced the Presidential Daily Briefings for George W. Bush, was Bush’s briefer during the September 11, 2001, attacks. He later served as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, starting in 2010 and served as Acting Director twice before the appointment of CIA Director John Brennan in March 2013. He was accused of whitewashing the Obama Administration’s handling of the Benghazi terror attack, and later defended himself here.

Morell was echoed by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who said Trump was a “gift to Putin … I am worried that Donald Trump, were he to win, would be the first president to have personal interests that could interfere with our country’s interest. Putin could not have dreamed up a better candidate than Donald Trump.”

Albright posited that Trump’s denial that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and his brush-off of a meeting with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting were also indicative of Trump’s toes to Putin. She asserted, “Trump didn’t even bother to respond. Maybe he should make his slogan ‘Russia First.’ “

Trump’s senior advisor, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, fired back:

These outlandish and slanderous attacks are signs of desperation from Hillary Clinton’s flailing campaign. She can’t hide from her disastrous record as Secretary of State, where she put the State Department up for sale to Clinton Foundation donors while she subjected America to Obama’s weak foreign policy around the globe. It’s hard to find a part of the world that isn’t less stable than when Hillary took office. The tens of millions of dollars in foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation present a dangerous conflict of interest that undermines her ability to serve.

Hillary Clinton met with Poroshenko on Monday.