Trump was more 'preoccupied with profit-making' than US safety: Former national security briefer recalls

A former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, Elizabeth Neumann, explained in a panel discussion with CNN's Jake Tapper, that she thinks President Donald Trump has violated his oath of office and is putting the country at risk. To make matters worse, a former briefer to Trump recalled the president more focus on turning a profit while in the White House.

"The fact is that he was not interested in doing the business of governing," Neumann explained. "We were able to make progress if he wasn't paying attention to our issues. But let's just take the issue of the rise of domestic terrorism in our country. That's a very complex issue. It's one that requires defining the threat, articulating the threat, and setting forth a strategy of how we're going to go after this emerging threat."

She explained that Trump had zero interest in any kind of leadership on the issue.

"Thankfully, there were professionals at the FBI, at DHS, at the National Counterterrorism Center who committed to doing what we could," she continued. "There were important conversations that have not been had, that won't happen as long as he is president. We are delaying getting the tools and laws updated that would help law enforcement be able to go after the threat more effectively."

Former senior analyst Kyle Murphy worked as the Defense Intelligence Agency and briefed Trump in the early days of the presidential transition in 2016 and into 2017. He told Tapper about his struggles in trying to get Trump to focus on important issues, but that Trump was more concerned with "profit-making."

"I was detailed to the White House National Security Council staff," Murphy recalled. "In my role in the transition in the first months of the Trump administration, I briefed the president ahead of several phone calls he was making to head of state counterparts overseas. What I found was a president who was uninterested in the court challenges to U.S. national security, preoccupied with profit-making, and who was willing to betray the ideals of U.S. democracy and the rule of law in order to cozy up to dictators and sell weapons. He didn't understand the challenges and the opportunities that were before him. As Elizabeth said, what I saw most often was, you needed to work around the president if you were to get things done on behalf of the American people. That's not the way the U.S. government should work."

See the full panel discussion with the former administration staff below: