President Trump on Thursday declined to offer a vote of confidence to his intelligence chiefs, who recently gave testimony at odds with his views on global threats.
“I disagree with certain things that they said,” Trump said when asked if he has confidence in Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel.
{mosads}“I think I’m right,” he added. “Time will prove me right, probably.”
The comments show the president’s frustration with his top intelligence officials amid intense media coverage of a congressional hearing earlier this week in which they said North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, Iran is complying with the Obama-era nuclear deal and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) still poses a grave threat.
Trump rejected their findings in a string of tweets on Wednesday, writing “perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
The president on Thursday defended his decision to pull out of the nuclear agreement with Tehran because “Iran is a great threat,” said “a tremendous amount of good things are happening” in Syria amid his decision to withdraw U.S. troops and touted North Korea’s decision to halt missile testing.
Trump chalked up his criticism to a disagreement over policy and not personal animus toward intelligence leaders, saying that he has “great respect for a lot of people, but I don’t always agree with everybody.”
Republicans in Congress have nonetheless expressed alarm with Trump’s spats with his military and intelligence advisers.
The GOP-controlled Senate on Thursday is set to vote on an amendment saying troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan pose a security risk to the U.S. in part because ISIS and al Qaeda pose a “continuing threat to the homeland and our allies”
Updated at 2:03 p.m.