Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called on the intelligence community to fake its way through the classified security briefings Donald Trump will receive now that he’s the Republican presidential nominee.
{mosads}“How would the CIA and the other intelligence agencies brief this guy? How could they do that?” he said Wednesday.
“I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous,” Reid told The Huffington Post during a Wednesday interview in Philadelphia, where the Democrats are holding their party’s national convention.
“Fake it, pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information.”
He went on to accuse Trump of being “part of a foreign power” for his controversial comments Wednesday that he hopes Russian hackers accused of stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee will also steal Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private emails.
Reid said that if Russia acts on Trump’s call, it would be “worse than Watergate.”
During Trump’s Wednesday press conference, he called on the intelligence community not to brief Clinton, arguing that the investigation into her private email server from her time as secretary of State proved that she couldn’t be trusted with classified information.
That echoes the call from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who asked the director of national intelligence to refuse to give Clinton classified briefings.