In an extraordinary admission from the former acting Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin told MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren that yes, the president’s erratic behavior is jeopardizing the United States and harming our nation’s credibility around the world. Especially his penchant for lying and/or misstating facts. A snippet of the interview with McLaughlin in which he outlines precisely how Donald Trump is putting our nation in jeopardy:
GRETA: With me is John McLaughlin, former acting director for the CIA. Good evening, sir.
MCLAUGHLIN: Greta.
GRETA: I suppose anybody who is subject to an investigation thinks it's a witch hunt.
MCLAUGHLIN: That's typical Washington reaction. In fact, this is not a witch hunt. This is a search for facts. And I think in the case of president trump, he's not had a great relationship with the facts. So, I think it may look like a witch hunt to him, but it's really a search for facts.
GRETA: How do we speed this up? Sort of drip, drip, drip, we've got FBI, the capitol hill, D.O.J., we have everybody involved in it and yet every day it's drip, drip, drip?
MCLAUGHLIN: I think it is important to get to some bottom line here because as the public becomes more aware of this, I think their confusion about what is going on in Washington is going to deepen. So, it's time really for some very articulate public figure to tell the public what is going on, what they should worry about and what they don't have to worry about and kind of calm things down. I think it's going to take awhile. As I remember investigations like the one that Bob Mueller is beginning, you pull on one thread and it opens up another. So, I think that part of it could take awhile and it's all the more important, then, that the parallel investigations in the senate, for example, where it seems to be going reasonably well, that that proceed as quickly as possible.
GRETA: It seems almost like -- it's great fodder for the media. I mean, because every day we get breaking news, usually happens about this time, which is fascinating for us. But, you know, there is so much of it, I pickup news articles, it says associates of, there's a lot of sort of anonymous reporting. There's a lot of leaks. And I go back to like, you know, who is talking? Is it this chilly relationship that the president supposedly has with the intelligence community? Is that what's sort of fueling some of these leaks?
MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we don't know ever what's fueling leaks, to tell you the truth. I'm always skeptical when people say it might be the intelligence community for a whole variety of reasons. But I think we're at a time when there is enough discontent and concern about the way the government is working that someone, I notice a lot of these anonymous sources are serving officials. It's unusual. I've had reporters tell me, it's unusual for so many people to be coming out of the woodwork. I doubt, frankly, that many of them are intelligence officers, but I think -- one of the ironies here to me, I've seen, worked for seven presidents. They all have been hard working, intense, focused, disciplined. It pains me to say this, but I don't see those qualities in President Trump. And I think a lot of his troubles here are self-inflicted. And I think that is why we are seeing this explosion of drip, drip, drip.
GRETA: Are those --
MCLAUGHLIN: We've not seen this ever before.
GRETA: Those self-inflicted wounds, are they putting us in jeopardy? That's a fundamental question because that makes a big difference.
MCLAUGHLIN: If we could shrug this off and say it's another controversy in Washington, that would be one thing. But I don't think we can. I think it puts us in jeopardy on two scores. First, I think the work of congress, legislative work that needs to get done in the interest of the American people is being paralyzed by a lot of this because of the obsession with it. And second, just from my own contacts with people overseas and foreigners, international people who come through Washington, I know that this is affecting the credibility of the United States around the world. Not just the apparent passage of intelligence information to the Russians that shouldn't have been passed. Leave that aside for the moment. The impression of chaos in Washington. And importantly, here is a very important point. The president of the united States has to have moral authority around the world when he or she speaks, people have to believe them. And our president has not yet established that believability that's key to the moral authority that the president has to have.
GRETA: What do you think Putin is getting out of this, if anything?
MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I think -- I'm quite convinced that Putin finds this all satisfying, regardless of the outcome. Even if it is established -- and we have to keep our minds
open -- that there was no collusion between the president --
GRETA: There was meddling. I'm pretty sure on that.
MCLAUGHLIN: Let's assume the worst is not established. Putin still has the satisfaction of seeing our government very wobbly, very confused, very chaotic, and he can point to our system here as having as many problems, he can portray it this way, as his system has which is, of course, to his advantage given that he sits on top of a lot of smart Russians who don't have very good governance, and who can look around the world and say, things could be better here. The worst he makes us look, the better it is for him domestically.
GRETA: Sir, thank you for joining us.
MCLAUGHLIN: A pleasure.