INTELLIGENCE/IRAN/ISIS/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has previously declared that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat, touted the defeat of ISIS, doubted the effects of climate change and railed against the Iran nuclear deal as ‘defective at its core.’ But the most senior intelligence officials in the Trump administration suggested Tuesday [1-29-19] that many of the President’s sweeping assertions related to national security are inconsistent with their own assessments. When pressed by Senate lawmakers during a hearing about the most urgent global threats facing the US, Trump’s intelligence chiefs, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA director Gina Haspel, appeared to contradict several claims made by the President to justify core tenets of his foreign policy. The apparent gap between Trump and his own intelligence agencies has been a persistent theme over the last two years, and Tuesday’s testimony illustrates just how stark the divide is between what the President says and the information he is being presented.”
–Zachary Cohen and Kevin Liptak, “US intelligence chiefs reveal gulf with Trump on North Korea, Iran and ISIS,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 29, 2019 4:55 am