INTELLIGENCE/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Wednesday [2-7-18] that he is unfazed by taunts from President Donald Trump, lamenting on CNN that such rhetoric has become ‘the new normal.’
Trump listed Clapper this week among the ‘biggest liars and leakers in Washington,’ a group that the president said also includes Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. Asked whether the attack bothered him, Clapper said, ‘No, it doesn’t.’…
Clapper, who is among the Obama-era officials appearing relatively frequently on cable news over the past year, has been harshly critical of Trump, at one point labeling the president’s performance at an Arizona rally last summer “disturbing” and questioning his fitness for office.
Trump, too, has eagerly lashed out at the intelligence community large and at Clapper specifically. In the weeks leading up to his inauguration last year, Trump, then president-elect, likened the intelligence community to Nazi Germany after reports surfaced a dossier of inflammatory and unverified intelligence about Trump. Last May, the president wrote on Twitter that Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates had started to ‘choke like dogs’ during Senate testimony.”
-Louis Nelson, “Ex-intel chief responds to Trump’s ‘liar’ dig: ‘This is normal now’,” Politico, Feb. 7, 2018 08:21am