{"id":26095,"date":"2017-11-12T19:29:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T19:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26095"},"modified":"2017-11-12T19:31:35","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T19:31:35","slug":"are-we-clear-now-potus-now-backs-intel-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26095","title":{"rendered":"Are we clear now? POTUS backs intel agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/cia-boss.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-26096\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/cia-boss-300x168.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/cia-boss-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/cia-boss-768x431.png 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/cia-boss.png 780w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s as clear as mud, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>Donald John Trump says in one breath that Vladimir Putin is sincere when he says Russia didn&#8217;t meddle in our nation&#8217;s 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>In virtually the next breath &#8212; actually it was the next day &#8212; the president says he backs the U.S. intelligence agencies&#8217; assessment that, yep, the Russians meddled, they interfered, they sought to influence the election outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The question now is this: Which is it, Mr. President? Who do you believe?<\/p>\n<p>This kind of stumble-bum rhetoric is driving many of us utterly bananas.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/11\/11\/politics\/trump-tran-dai-quang-vietnam\/index.html\">POTUS back tracks<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Trump had been &#8220;on script&#8221; for most of his 12-day trip to Asia. Then he shook hands with the Russian president; the men met privately for a brief period in Da Nang, Vietnam. Putin told Trump he has been &#8220;offended&#8221; by assertions that Russia meddled in our election. Trump seemed to side with the bad guy while dismissing the assessments of the good guys, the men and women who work for <em>our<\/em> intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<p>For the life of me, I don&#8217;t understand &#8212; let alone accept &#8212; Trump&#8217;s belief that Putin can be trusted as far as he can throw him. The man is a former KGB hot shot. He is <em>trained to lie<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Forgive me for quoting former Fox TV commentator Bill O&#8217;Reilly, but O&#8217;Reilly did assert correctly during an interview with Trump that &#8220;Putin is a killer&#8221;; Trump responded by saying, essentially, &#8220;So are we.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Good &#8230; grief. Dude! Get an ever-lovin&#8217; grip!<\/p>\n<p>Oh, but now he backs U.S. intelligence analysts, who&#8217;ve been saying all along that Russian hackers meddled in our election &#8212; and they did so on orders from Vladimir Putin. One of them who stands by our analysis of Russian meddling happens to be CIA Director Mike Pompeo, whom <em>Trump appointed<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>My head is spinning.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s as clear as mud, isn&#8217;t it? Donald John Trump says in one breath that Vladimir Putin is sincere when he says Russia didn&#8217;t meddle in our nation&#8217;s 2016 presidential election. In virtually the next breath &#8212; actually it was the next day &#8212; the president says he backs the U.S. intelligence agencies&#8217; assessment that, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26095\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Are we clear now? POTUS backs intel agencies<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[74,989,1424,6851,7202,7093,5125],"class_list":["post-26095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-2016-election","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-mike-pompeo","tag-russia-meddling","tag-russia-probe","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26095"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26098,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26095\/revisions\/26098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}