One of the things Putin said in his interview with Tucker that I found interesting was that he claims US presidents had good relationships with him, and wanted to work with him, such as Bill Clinton saying he could probably join NATO but then later say he can't. Putin claimed it was the CIA and not the President who drove the deision making. I don't take Putin at face value, he's probably muddling facts and spinning propaganda to make himself look good, but the claim of CIA over President is an interesting one. That may be a thing, and it may be a thing in other contexts and scenarios outside of this one. How much power do you think the President has in practice, and how much power do you think the unelected (not just the CIA) have in making decisons that drive the USA? In the case of George Bush Jr. it seems pretty obvious that Cheney, Rumsfeld and others were playing a big role in running the show. With Biden its hard to believe he is making decisions given his apparent senility. Sometimes I hear things Trump says and I think he may be telling or hinting at things the public is not supposed to know; tha. When he told Zelinski that it would be great if he and Putin could resolve the conflict, Zelisnki's facial expression was interesting. He looked surprised to me, like he's been receiving mixed messages from the US.
I don't think Clinton needed the CIA to tell him that Putin joining NATO was not a good idea. In the worst of cases, it might have been Hillary who told him that. After Trump I would have to say the President has TOO much power. I think it's likely that the CIA kept things from him. Because very early in his presidency he demonstrated that he had no interest in America's security. W might have been manipulated because he wasn't particularly intelligent. But his dad had been head of the CIA. So he likely gave him some pointers. I don't know how assertive Biden is. But I'm sure the CIA would not mess with Obama. So I would say it depends on who the President is. Trump was definitely a bag of mixed messages. But that's just because he was pretty much clueless. Zelinski's face was more likely like "what kind of ignorant idiot is this!"
There is no doubt that the President, any President, is subject to the information that they are given/not given. And our intelligence agencies are the ones that have that information. As they say, knowledge is power. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were those that withheld information from the President in order to push an agenda that they think better fits America, or perhaps even their own self interests. Or maybe even give false information. The problem of course is how to make sure that all information is relayed to the President? Obviously there is going to be some information that is worthless to the President and relaying it would be worthless and time consuming at the very best. As such there has to be leeway in letting the heads of our intelligence agencies decide what information is relayed and what is not. The only way I can think of is for an incoming President to fire the previous administrations head and put in one that you know is not biased against you. Of course that could lead to its own problems as well. Frankly, there is no real good solution. Trust is something that is absolutely needed for a functioning government and society to work. Trust in our intelligence agencies, and trust in our President. And it only takes a few bad apples to erode that trust. And from what I can tell that trust has been eroded over the last SEVERAL Presidencies. Clinton for example lied about getting a BJ in the oval office. And while many did not care about him getting a BJ, (and in fact slammed Republicans for their response to it, both verbally and at the ballot box), that lie still hurt The Peoples trust. Then Bush Jr with the lies about WMD's. And so on and so forth. And then there was the wikileaks dump with Manning. That hit peoples trust in our intelligence agencies pretty hard. BTW: As of me writing this there were no posts in this thread, just the OP. But I can already predict that there will be those that scoff and call what is said in the OP as a BS conspiracy theory and will mock and ridicule.
Well this brings up the whole deep statr thingy and I for one believe it to be a reality. The unelected bureaucrats run this government and have a lot more power than they should. More power than anyone can rein in.
