The bogus free speech argument about Brennan losing his security clearance

Eli Lake:
Trump Is Not Trying to Silence Brennan

The president’s strategy is the opposite: to make the former CIA director more prominent and use him as a foil.

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As is so often the case, however, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Far from trying to silence Brennan, Trump is elevating him. He wants to make Brennan the face of the so-called resistance. This is the Trump playbook. Why do you think he keeps tweeting about Maxine Waters? He is a man who approaches politics like professional wrestling, happy to play the villain if it energizes his base. And for Trump, Brennan is a perfect adversary.
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Start with Brennan’s recent obsession, Russia. It’s true that, as CIA director, Brennan took a keen interest in the prospect of Russian agents suborning members of the Trump campaign. That said, Brennan was a senior national security official throughout the Obama presidency. It was not until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 that Obama began seriously countering Russian aggression — and even then the policy was tempered by the administration’s primary goal of getting a nuclear agreement with Iran. That deal was negotiated in part with Russia.

Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, told me that the Obama administration was less interested in holding Russia accountable for its actions in Syria and Ukraine than in getting Russia’s cooperation in signing a nuclear agreement with Iran. “My impression was that John Brennan felt we could come to terms with Russia,” he said.
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There is more.

I agree that this was not about silencing Brennan.  Heck, a security clearance is supposed to silence someone who has access to classified information.  I handled top secret material when I was an officer in the Marine Corps and I am still reluctant to talk about it some 50 years later.  Brennan still has his gig on NBC and will still be a Trump critic.

I think what Trump has done is expose Brennan as a conspiracy nut who is twisting an obvious joke by Trump into a nefarious plot.

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