‘You almost want to cry’: Ex-CIA officer slams Trump’s ‘disgusting’ speech before memorial to dead agents

Former CIA Deputy Director Philip Mudd on Tuesday slammed Donald Trump’s “disgusting” speech to CIA officials over the weekend, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, he almost wanted to cry after the president’s self-aggrandizing presentation.

On CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Blitzer asked Mudd to comment on Trump’s speech Saturday, wherein the president focused almost exclusively on his “running war with the media,” and what he perceives as unfair coverage of his inauguration crowd size.

Trump’s speech even drew a rebuke from former CIA Director John Brennan, who said he was “deeply saddened and angered” by Trump’s display.

Tuesday, Mudd echoed Brennan’s sentiment, telling Blitzer, “You almost want to cry, Wolf.”

“I mean there’s a sense of outrage, but there’s also such a sense of sadness,” Mudd added. “Those aren’t stars, Wolf, those are people.”

“We have a president who has to talk about how many times he’s been on a Time Magazine cover in comparison to a football player,” Mudd later added. “He has to talk about how many people showed up at his inauguration. He’s got to talk about how many people in the CIA enjoyed his speech. That’s what we get to honor the people who lost their lives.”

Arguing that what the CIA agents deserved was a speech honoring the lives of killed CIA agents and discussing the future of American security, Mudd railed against Trump’s diatribe.

“What do we get?” Mudd asked. “How many times he’s been on theTime Magazine cover. It’s disgusting Wolf, I don’t know what else to say. You can’t do that if you’re the president.”

“It’s unbelievable that you have to sit there and talk about yourself instead of honoring those who did more than you did,” Mudd added.

The former CIA deputy director also criticized Trump’s “fourth grader’s obsession” with crowd sizes, noting Trump’s priorities over the past four days have not reflected a seriousness required for the presidency.

“It feels like we’re on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride here,” Mudd said, referring to a dark ride at Disneyland Park. “We’ve got, within 24 hours of the inauguration, an insult to the CIA, we’ve got a fourth grader’s obsession with how many people showed up at his inauguration, and now we have like a magical mystery tour about how many people voted in the election, that’s in four days, Wolf.”


“In the election preceding that, we had a president who commented negatively about the appearance of one of his opponents, who made comments—negatively—about a deformity of a New York Times reporter, and who commented publicly about his own genitalia,” Mudd reminded Blitzer.

Watch the video below, via CNN: