Ex-CIA head rips Trump's CNN tweets: He 'abdicated his responsibility as a spokesman for American values’

President Donald Trump's tweets echoing the Kremlin's attacks on CNN International are, according to a former acting CIA director, indicative of potential dangers to come for journalists working overseas -- and could be evidence of something nefarious between the American and Russian regimes.

"These things come at you so fast and furious, this weekend's tweet and today the Pocahontas business, that I fear Americans may become numb to this and start to think it's normal behavior," former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin told MSNBC's Ari Melber.

"What's really going on here is the president has abdicated his responsibility as a credible spokesman for American values," he continued. "This is the kind of thing that gives Putin a talking point in a country that already has no free media where the journalists are essentially sycophantic to the president."

McLaughlin went on to say that Trump's tweet "endangers the lives of journalists overseas, and it sends a message to dictators around the world that the president of the United States, normally the representative of a free media, doesn't particularly care."

Though it's "impossible to say" whether Trump tweeted attacks on CNN International to impress Putin, McLaughlin said it seems highly unlikely that it's a coincidence.

"It's the kind of thing you almost can't make up," the former acting CIA director said. "If you put it a novel, you probably wouldn't believe it or think it was too fantastical."

Watch McLaughlin lay into Trump's latest public alignment with the Kremlin below, via MSNBC.