Trump Advisors Furious Over Dan Coats Interview

The Washington Post reports:



Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over [Director of National Intelligence Dan] Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump. “Coats has gone rogue,” said one senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment.

White House aides are worried that Trump will interpret the comments by Coats as a personal betrayal, since they came so soon after the president praised him. Explaining that Trump does not take kindly to slights and that he nurses grudges, one official predicted that Coats’s Aspen interview could bother the president more than the many ethical blunders of Scott Pruitt, who was ousted as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.