John Brennan pens op-ed vowing to criticize Trump ‘until integrity returns to the White House’

Former CIA Director John Brennan tears into President Trump in a new op-ed for The Washington Post, vowing to continue speaking out against the president “until integrity returns to the White House.”

Brennan, who served as director of the agency under former President Obama, is a frequent Trump critic. Most recently, he referred to Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement as “madness.”

In The Washington Post, Brennan writes about his “admiration” for the office of the presidency after working with and serving under multiple presidents, saying that while he “didn’t agree with all of their policy choices,” he “never doubted that each treated their solemn responsibility to lead our nation with anything less than the seriousness, intellectual rigor and principles that it deserved.”

“The esteem with which I held the presidency was dealt a serious blow when Donald Trump took office,” Brennan writes. “Almost immediately, I began to see a startling aberration from the remarkable, though human, presidents I had served.”

{mosads}Brennan rips Trump for bringing a “lifelong preoccupation with aggrandizing himself” to the White House, and expresses concern that “his mean-spirited and malicious behavior” will be copied by future generations.

“[He] has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us,” Brennan writes of Trump.

The former CIA director, who also served as Obama’s homeland security adviser and as director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President George W. Bush, also compares Trump to “corrupt, incompetent … demagogues,” and refers to his foreign policy approach as “uninformed,” “impulsive” and “dangerous.”

Brennan warns that even those who supported Trump’s campaign promises will fall victim to “the damage” he causes in office.

“At a time when deep-seated fears of socioeconomic and cultural change need to be addressed honestly and without prejudice, Mr. Trump grandstands like a snake-oil salesman, squandering his formidable charisma and communication skills in favor of ego, selfishness and false promises,” he writes.

Brennan, who has repeatedly raised concerns about Trump in interviews and on Twitter, ends the piece with a defense against critics who say his words are political.

“I have never been and will never be a partisan,” he writes. “I speak out for the simple reason that Mr. Trump is failing to live up to the standards that we should all expect of a president,” he writes.