President Trump tore into ex-CIA Director John Brennan, calling him a “very bad person” after the former intelligence chief criticized the president’s performance during a controversial news conference on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I think Brennan is a very bad guy, and if you look at it, a lot of things happened under his watch,” Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview set to be aired Tuesday night. “I think he’s a very bad person.”
{mosads}Trump then broadened his criticism of current and former intelligence officials to include former FBI Director James Comey, FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
“You look at the deception, the lies. These are people that in my opinion are truly — they’re bad people. And they’re being exposed for what they are,” Trump said.
Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017, ostensibly for his handling of the law enforcement investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State. Strzok and Page were revealed last year to have exchanged text messages critical of Trump during the 2016 race.
The president’s comments came after he challenged the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election during a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Finland.
The comments drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, who admonished Trump for rebuking his own intelligence agencies and placing some blame on the U.S. for current tensions with Russia.
In a tweet posted shortly after the news conference on Monday, Brennan, a frequent critic of the president, said that Trump’s behavior was “treasonous” and accused him of being “wholly in the pocket of Putin.”
“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors,’ ” Brennan tweeted.
“It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin,” the former CIA head continued. “Republican Patriots: Where are you???”
Trump and Brennan have traded criticism in the past, including when Trump called Brennan a “liar” after the former Obama administration official wrote a scathing op-ed in The Washington Post.