Alysin Camerota brought on James Clapper and Andrew McCabe to talk about the current chaos in the Trump administration's national security structure.
"Andy, I want to start with you. What's going on here? The fact that President Trump won't concede, the fact that the GSA won't certify. the fact that attorney general Bill Barr is telling federal prosecutors to go try to find some sort of voting irregularities or fraud. What's happening?" she said.
McCabe said he thought Trump's response was predictable.
"His inability to accept reality, his inability to embrace the fact that his campaign lost to Joe Biden. That part we knew would happen. The really troubling part is the second piece, which is, once again, administration officials and his political supporters on the Hill are getting right in line with his refusal to comply with the norms that we expect and are required to ensure we have a smooth transition of power, and to ensure we don't miss a beat in terms of protecting this country from foreign adversaries," he said.
"It's really, really concerning, both his failure to accept reality and the lack of courage and ethics that you see currently being displayed by Republican officials all over D.C."
James Clapper offered his perspective.
"Well, first of all, in the Pentagon, i spent about 13 years there and I kind of understand the ethos there. And what's going on now is obviously very disruptive and distracting," he said.
He said it was hard enough to work there under normal conditions. "And now when you have the turnover and the purging and then the installation of a network of, essentially, political commissars, this is a real distraction from the nerve center of our national defense. So it's not a good thing, you know, just to reinforce what Andy said."
He said Pompeo's remarks were "kind of belittling the vote and the voting process, and the people who stood in line for hours, regardless of their persuasion, at some risk to their health and perhaps their lives to vote. and it just gave me the feeling he was belittling it.
"Not to mention, of course, how bad this makes us look overseas. Here is the United States, the champion of democracy. and the current administration -- the president and his enablers are perpetuating this fantasy that he won the election. And if I was an intelligence analyst in a foreign country looking at the United States, you know, I would be writing up its slow slide into autocracy."
He said the obstruction of not allowing Biden to get the presidential daily briefing was "not a good thing from a national security viewpoint."
