[Wisconsin Public Radio] Leaving federal government service after decades can be, well, liberating.Just ask James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, the former leader of the Central Intelligence Agency. They unloaded on President Trump and the "baffling" way he's embraced Russia while criticizing his own intelligence apparatus during a session at the Aspen Security Forum Friday.
Asked whether the president is taking the Russia threat seriously, Clapper replied: "Well, it's hard to tell. Sometimes I think he's about making Russia great again."
That remark drew laughter and gasps from an audience of current and former government officials and the business executives who
"In some respects, we're a nation in crisis right now," Brennan said.
Then, for the next hour, they counted the ways.
The veteran spies expressed surprise that Trump campaign officials including then-chairman Paul Manafort, son Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner would take a meeting in New York last year with a Russian lawyer who promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.