Panetta: Trump’s Undermining the Presidency When He Strips Clearances

EXCERPT:

PANETTA: "Well, as you saw from all of those that signed that letter, there were some 15 of us Republicans and Democrats who served in the intelligence area. And our concern is that this is about our national security interests. When you talk about security clearances, security clearances are used in order to help protect our national security. There are 4 million security clearances out there, largely in our intelligence community, our military community, and others that are serving our national security and trying to protect this country. To use our security clearance process, which is related to national security, to use that now as a political weapon, to go after people whose political views you may not like, whose speech you may not like, whose support for investigations you may not like, turns our national security interests into a political weapon. I think this is kind of Trump’s approach of wag the dog, where he is using national security issues to divert attention. And I feel that that undermines not only our national security, I think it undermines the office of the presidency."