Gingrich: Trump Should ‘Thoroughly Overhaul’ Incompetent Intelligence Community

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” while discussing the unverified dossier about President-elect Donald Trump and Russia, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said Trump questions about the competence of the  intelligence community are valid and he would recommend Trump “thoroughly overhaul the entire community.”

Partial transcript as follows:

DICKERSON: Let me ask you about interpretations in the intelligence community, he, Donald Trump takes over the intelligence community in five days and he referred to them twice and compared them to the Nazis. you need trust in that relationship, if his first reaction is to think the intelligence agencies are trying to do him wrong and compares them to the Nazis that does not suggest a relationship of trust and —

GINGRICH: I don’t think there should be a good relationship right now. I spent a lot of my career as you know dealing with the intelligence community and I would make two points. One, the very top people who are political appointees I think absolutely betrayed and undermined the intelligence community, I think they acted in ways totally inappropriate.Two—

DICKERSON: In this specific context?

GINGRICH: In this specific context, and also by the way in Benghazi, if you go back and look at how the CIA agreed to restate the facts in a way that was totally false. This is at the political appointee level which has corrupted by the Obama administration. There is a second point to general education, how do you get a report that apparently John McCain passed in December that says that this one person, a real human being was in Prague and a in all of that time, in ten months, 11 months nobody in the intelligence community picked up the phone and said, have you ever been to the Czech Republic? I mean, think about the level of incompetence?

DICKERSON: So I guess my question though is how do you work, then, with this —

GINGRICH: Well well I hope what he does say to the new director of national intelligence Dan Coats is I expect you to overhaul the entire community.

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