Eli Lake, Columnist

Why Trump Doesn't Trust His Spies

The U.S. intelligence community's resistance to the president is no excuse for his embrace of Putin.

November 15, 2017 at 5:16 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

It's not like he's still in the KGB. — It's not like he's *still* in the KGB.
Photographer: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images

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The least interesting question about the Donald Trump presidency is why he doesn't trust the judgment of America's spy agencies.

It comes up every few weeks. Trump will tweet his disdain for one of Barack Obama's former intelligence leaders. He will belch out a weird conspiracy theory from time to time. But mainly this phenomenon concerns Trump's comments about Russia's role in meddling in the election he won.