'I can be silent no longer': former intel official denounces Trump
Perhaps the most under-appreciated element of the 2020 race: the staggering number of people who've worked directly with Trump and now want to see him lose
Sept. 25, 2020,
2:16 PM CDT
By Steve Benen
Robert
Cardillo may not be recognized by much of the public, but his background
commands respect. He served as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency and the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He managed,
edited, and delivered the President's Daily Brief, spending hundreds of
mornings in the Oval Office with different presidents. Cardillo was also a
deputy on the National Security Council, spending over 1,000 hours in the White
House Situation Room.
He
never registered with a political party or engaged in election activism. But
Cardillo nevertheless wrote a new op-ed for
the Denver Post denouncing Donald Trump, explaining why he
"can be silent no longer."
I
have briefed him up close -- and I have seen and felt the effect of his faults
on our nation's security.... He has little patience for facts or data that do
not comport with his personal world view. Thus, the conversations are erratic
and less than fully thoughtful.
Cardillo's
piece went on to decry Trump's coziness with dictators, his selfishness, his
denigration of military service, and his pandemic ineptitude.
[A]s
damaging as his faulty leadership has been, four more years would be
devastating. We must elect a thoughtful, moral, responsible, respectful leader
on Nov. 3. Our current president is not that leader.
I
continue to think one of the most under-appreciated elements of the 2020 race
is the staggering number of people who've worked closely with Trump and who now
want to see him lose.
Circling
back to our earlier coverage,
the list isn't especially short. Former White House National Security Advisor
John Bolton worked side by side with Trump for a year and a half, and he concluded that
the president is not "fit for office."
Just
two weeks before Bolton made this assessment, former Defense Secretary James
Mattis, wrote a rather extraordinary
rebuke of Trump, condemning the president for being divisive,
immature, and cavalier about abusing his powers. Soon after, former White House
Chief of Staff John Kelly, another veteran of Team Trump, publicly
endorsed Mattis' criticisms.
Kelly
added, "I think we need to look harder at who we elect. I think we should
look at people that are running for office and put them through the filter:
What is their character like? What are their ethics?"
It
also wasn't long ago when former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shared some uncomplimentary
thoughts of his own about Trump. According to the nation's
former chief diplomat, the president is "pretty undisciplined,"
"doesn't like to read," and "often" urged Tillerson to
pursue policies that were inconsistent with American laws.
Meanwhile, Miles Taylor,
who worked with Trump as a chief of staff at the Department of Homeland
Security, recently endorsed Joe Biden, as did Olivia Troye,
who worked as a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence for two
years, and who also served as his top adviser on the White House Coronavirus
Task Force.
Trump
has faced even fiercer criticisms from his former personal attorney Michael
Cohen and his former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.
Under
normal circumstances, a president should expect criticisms from a rival party's
members. A White House incumbent should similarly expect unflattering critiques
from various pundits and commentators.
But
it's qualitatively different to hear from officials who worked directly
with Trump. They had a front-row seat, watching how the president tried to
lead, how he processed information, how he evaluated evidence, and how he made
decisions.
And
now that these men and women have left the administration and had an
opportunity to reflect on their time in the administration, they're eager to
see Americans vote for someone else.
History
offers plenty of examples of presidents who've clashed with one aide or another,
but we've never seen anything like this.
I
don't seriously expect the president's die-hard followers to listen to Trump's
more progressive detractors, but when prominent members of Trump's own
team denounce him, it should give everyone pause.
Update: The aforementioned
list could probably include several other former national security leaders who also worked under
Trump. Retired Adm. Paul Zukunft, who stepped down as commandant of the Coast
Guard in June 2018, has had some especially notable criticisms of the current president.