Ex-CIA chief: Trump will do ‘lasting harm to American society’

Former CIA Director John Brennan ripped President Trump’s response to the violence at a weekend rally in Charlottesville, Va., saying the president “will do lasting harm to American society.” 

“Mr. Trump’s words, and the beliefs they reflect, are a national disgrace, and all Americans of conscience need to repudiate his ugly and dangerous comments,” Brennan wrote in a letter to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“If allowed to continue along this senseless path, Mr. Trump will do lasting harm to American society and to our standing in the world.” 

Brennan wrote the letter after watching Blitzer speak publicly about losing all four of his grandparents to Nazism.

{mosads}”By his words and his actions, Mr. Trump is putting our national security and our collective futures at grave risk,” the former Obama-era CIA director continued in the letter published on Wednesday. 

The letter comes after Trump gave an impromptu press conference on Tuesday doubling down on his claim that “both sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville during a white supremacist rally.

“You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest,” the president said, referencing those who said they were protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. 

“Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch,” he continued. 

Attendees at the Friday rally carried tiki torches and chanted Nazi slogans.

On Saturday, a man with alleged links to neo-Nazi groups drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring at least a dozen others.

Blitzer read the letter to Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.),who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Wednesday

“I think Director Brennan, he’s right. He’s a veteran. He’s skilled. I have great respect for him. I’ve worked with him. He sits on a panel — he has sat on a panel with me and Congresswoman Terri Sewell of Alabama in terms of recruiting more minorities in the IC [intelligence community] space.  And I think his instincts are right,” Carson said.