Ritter Tells Trump, Stop Listening to Israel and Listen to Your Own DNI
June 18—Former UN weapons inspector and Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter yesterday published the sixth edition of short video statements that he has dubbed “Ritter’s Rant.” Today’s episode is headlined “Who Controls the President?”
Ritter begins by reminding viewers that candidate Trump repeatedly denounced American involvement in foreign wars, and yet “here we are with the President of the United States today basically taking ownership of the Israeli-Iranian conflict, speaking in terms of collective responsibilities. ‘We have control of the skies over Iran. We know where the supreme leader is hiding. Oh, we’re not going to kill him, but we know where he is.’ And demanding the unconditional surrender of Iran to whom? The United States? Are we at war with Iran to the point where the president is demanding unconditional surrender?”
An alarmed Ritter asks: “How did we get to this point?” He reminds viewers that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program and does not constitute a national security threat to the United States. “And yet, when President Trump was confronted on Air Force One with the reality of Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment, he said, I don’t care what she says, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Where is the president getting his information? Who is briefing the president?"
Ritter then describes the “stove piping” of intelligence, without using that expression: "We know that Israel has been making a case that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Is the president of the United States of America, allowing the Israeli government, allowing Israeli intelligence to run an endgame around the Director of National Intelligence and brief the President directly? As an American, I would take umbrage at that very notion that a foreign power has taken the lead in briefing the President of the United States on matters that pertain to war.
“And again, I want to remind the United States Congress that the Constitution vests in Congress in a singular fashion, the ability to take the nation to war. And now we have a commander in chief who appears to be held hostage by foreign intelligence, taking his briefing from them acting on it without consulting Congress.”
Ritter's podcast generally have tens of thousands of views, including people from the Trump base.
Ritter concludes: "These are very dangerous times. We have a president who’s acting more and more like an out-of-control dictator, a man who operates in direct contravention to the Constitution and to the notion of democratic due process. Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence. She’s the one the president should be listening to. If he’s unhappy with her advice, then he should fire her and find somebody else to do that job. But at the end of the day, the person briefing the president of the United States on information that pertains to the potential use of American military power in a warlike situation must be the director of national intelligence, an American citizen whose position has been approved by the Congress of the United States, not some secret, unnamed foreign intelligence operative whispering sweet nothings into the president’s ear.
“This is a very dangerous situation. America finds itself on the edge of the abyss, where we are about to enter into yet another Middle East conflict that will cost us trillions, cost us thousands of lives, and take us nowhere closer to the notional objective of peace and prosperity for the American people. ‘America First’ has been transformed into ‘Israel First,’ and this should be unacceptable to all Americans.”