Obama’s CIA Director just showed the best way to combat Trump’s agenda

John O. Brennan is a battle-hardened veteran of the war on terror. As President Obama’s Director of The Central Intelligence Agency, he was one of the most respected members of the intelligence community before President Trump started his own war, the propaganda war on the “Deep State,” a concept that he shamelessly “adopted” from the furthest fringes of the insanely paranoid conspiracy theorists on InfoWars.

Brennan has been watching from the sidelines since Trump took office. As a former spy chief, he did not take the decision to participate in social media lightly. Secrecy is ingrained in CIA personnel. Sharing is not.

Yet Brennan set up a verified Twitter account this past September and sent his first tweets out this week. His first tweet a few days ago commemorated the victims of the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103, popularly known as the Lockerbie bombing, after the Scottish town where it crashed.

He’s only tweeted twice more since then, but both reveal a strong opposition to the Trump agenda and to how the current occupant of the White House conducts his administration.

Trump Admin threat to retaliate against nations that exercise sovereign right in UN to oppose US position on Jerusalem is beyond outrageous. Shows @realDonaldTrump expects blind loyalty and subservience from everyone—qualities usually found in narcissistic, vengeful autocrats.

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) December 21, 2017

A former intelligence chief is trained in observational skills in dealing with everyone they meet to ascertain whether that person is friend or foe, useful asset or deadly threat, but Brennan hardly needed to draw upon those skills for this obvious analysis.

It is Brennan’s latest tweet that lifts him from a simple passive observer to a forceful advocate for direct action.

Andy McCabe & Jim Baker epitomize integrity, competence, and respect for rule of law. Not surprised @realDonaldTrump fears them, along with the rest of FBI. I just donated to @FBIAgentsAssoc as a small way of saying #thanksFBI. Here’s how you can too: https://t.co/eSCrfJxxwx https://t.co/QIzsn6EGYY

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) December 24, 2017

The tweet that Brennan is responding to comes from Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institute and the Editor In Chief of the Lawfare legal blog, whose promotion of the idea of donating to the FBI Agents Association proved so popular when he suggested it yesterday that the traffic surge crashed their website.

Brennan’s take on Trump’s motivation for his attacks on those particular individuals at the FBI, the fear of the qualities of integrity, competence, and respect for the rule of law that the President himself lacks in all aspects of his behavior, is the real fruit of his observational skills. That the ex-CIA chief was so motivated by revulsion at Trump’s tweets that he took action and urged others to do so as well, shows that the Resistance has moved to a whole new level.