Lawfare Archive: A House Divided

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

From May 6, 2017: Three months into the Trump presidency, where does the relationship between the president and the intelligence community stand? Donald Trump is no longer quite so regularly combative in his tweets and public comments about the various intelligence agencies, but the White House-intelligence community relationship is still far from normal under this very unusual presidency. Here to ponder the question are former NSA and CIA director General Michael Hayden, former acting and deputy director of CIA John McLaughlin, and former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism Juan Zarate, who spoke with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in a recent event at the Aspen Institute.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising.
0:04.4	To access an ad-free version of the Lawfare podcast, become a material supporter of Lawfare at
0:11.5	patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare.
0:18.2	Also, check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare No Bull,
0:26.9	and The Aftermath.
0:46.6	I'm Mary Ford, Internet Lawfare, with an episode for the Lawfare Archive for July 27, 2025.
0:53.1	This week, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, waited into the debate over, quote,
0:54.5	Russiagate, unquote. Among other allegations, Gabbard, waited into the debate over, quote, Russia Gate, unquote.
0:59.3	Among other allegations, Gabbard has claimed that members of the Obama administration participated in a, quote, treasonous conspiracy, unquote, to prevent Donald Trump from winning
1:05.7	the 2016 election. This week, in his The Situation column, Benjamin Wittes argued that Gabbard's attacks of
1:13.2	critics are not all that different from President Trump's demonstrated strategy for responding to
1:18.6	scandal, reconning the narrative as a witch hunt, and redirecting the attention of the president's
1:24.0	supporters onto political adversaries. For today's archive episode, I selected an episode from May 6, 2017,
1:32.5	in which David Ignatius spoke with General Michael Hayden,
1:36.2	John McLaughlin, and Juan Zarate at an Aspen Institute event
1:40.6	to take stock of President Trump's relationship with the intelligence community,
1:45.0	where this relationship was headed at the time and more.
1:59.0	I'm Quinta Durecic, and this is the Lawfare Podcast. May 6th, 2017.
2:06.6	More than 100 days into the Trump presidency, the president's ongoing feud with the intelligence community has calmed somewhat.
2:13.6	But while we're no longer treated quite so often to presidential tweets criticizing
2:18.5	various intelligence agencies, there's still a long way to go in healing the breach.
2:23.3	Recently at the Aspen Institute, the Washington Post's David Ignatius sat down with former
	...

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