‘I’m with you a thousand per cent’: US President Donald Trump seeks to quell feud with CIA
The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia intervened in the 2016 election, provoking intensive and public pushback from Trump
US President Donald Trump has told the CIA he is “with you a thousand per cent”, apparently pivoting away from an unprecedented feud with the agency that he blamed on the media.
For his first official act in office, Trump trekked to the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia to deliver an often self-referential address that pledged support for an intelligence service he has frequently attacked since winning the election and has even likened to “Nazi Germany”.
With the agency’s memorial wall honouring operatives killed in the course of their duties behind him, Trump boasted of the size of his campaign and inauguration crowds – incorrectly asserting they were larger than Barack Obama’s inauguration audience – attacked the press, and suggested he would issue an effective blank check for intelligence operations.
“Probably everyone in this room voted for me,” Trump said, before adding: “I love honesty.”
Watch: Trump’s entire CIA speech
Yet there are officials within the CIA who consider Trump disturbingly close to their traditional Moscow adversaries, an assessment likely to provide the backdrop for his early dealings with the intelligence services.
