By Buck Sexton
Opinion Contributor
Is President Trump paranoid or is the Deep State out to get him?
I think that’s a question we all should ask right now in the aftermath of a less-than-stellar Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin.
Did the president put his best foot forward? Should he have equated Russian and U.S. policy and intel agencies?
No – definitely not. But there’s also a backstory to all this, one that we can’t lose sight of.
First, President Trump’s Russia policy, which is what really counts here, has been more aggressive than his predecessor – more sanctions, more weapons for the Ukrainians, more expulsions of Russian diplomats. These are just facts.
On the other hand, what we saw earlier this week in Helsinki was the president taking very personally the issue of Russian election interference.
He knows the left uses this to cast his election as illegitimate, and he’s tired of it.
Frankly, I don’t blame him for that.
Then there was the issue of – who do you trust on intelligence agencies – the Russians or the Americans?
This is where the president got caught up.
Overall, there’s no question – our intel agencies are moral, ethical, have more integrity than anything the Russians have got.
I should know – I used to be a CIA officer.
But we also can’t ignore there was a clear cabal of anti-Trumpism at the pinnacle of the intelligence community under the Obama administration.
The former CIA director called the president’s summit treasonous on Twitter.
Does John Brennen not know the definition of treason?
He wasn’t the only one. Former FBI Director James Comey, also chimed in saying Trump’s behavior needs to be reject by all patriots.
There’s a pattern here. Former DNI James Clapper, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe. You have so many senior intel officials who have made it clear they are part of the hashtag anti-Trump resistance
Is it any wonder Trump is a bit sensitive to the allegations of collusion when so many powerful supposedly nonpartisan intel officials have come out publicly against him? Some of whom by the way were personally involved in concocting the collusion fantasy with the Russians when they were in government.
Add to this the fact there have been illegal leaks- from people with classified access to damage this president, and the picture of why he takes all this personally makes a bit more sense.
Now look, I get it – he’s the leader of the free world. He needs to see past the petty political nonsense and stand proudly for us, especially on the world stage. On that level, he missed the mark in Helsinki.
But if we look a little deeper, we see a president that continues to inspires insane hysteria in his critics, and an intelligence community that will have politicized leadership going forward because they hate Trump so much today.
That’s a loss for all of us – and that’s not Trump’s fault.
This wasn’t pearl harbor. it wasn’t 9/11. It was a bad day for a presidency that has more than its share of critics already.
President Trump can and will do better next time. I wish I could say the same for his harshest critics, who have an incurable case of Trump derangement syndrome.
Buck Sexton is the co-host of “Rising,” Hill.TV’s morning news show.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill.
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