Leon Panetta

It's all about protecting him. It's all about saying whatever he has to say that will somehow protect him, particularly with his base of support.

The responsibility of Dan Coats and, for that matter, the intelligence community, is to speak truth to power.

If you're President of the United States, it's much better if you appreciate the facts as they're presented rather than trying to create your own view of what the world should be.

I think it's dangerous.

It's really hard to see how this President is going to accept intelligence in a responsible way.

The way he bears the consequences is that those matters then turn sour on him because he's failing to lead this country with regards to national security issues.

This President obviously doesn't have a great deal of experience in government accepting the intelligence that's presented to him.

If they're going to appoint somebody to be chief of staff for the President and somebody who can perform the role of chief of staff, it's got to be somebody who has a relationship with this president, somebody that the president trust and…

I think it's a failing of this President in terms of his ability to really talk honestly to people.

The one thing that is clear is that he doesn't like to have that kind of discipline imposed, and that makes it even tougher for any chief of staff to be able to do the job.

The fact that Trump would now take on criticizing General Mattis sends a message that somebody who really is strong and has the knowledge that is necessary for Secretary of Defense is somebody who the President doesn't necessarily go along…

It undermines the Defense Department and, frankly, it undermines our national security because Jim Mattis I think is without question probably one of the more respected members of the cabinet because he's knowledgeable.

I have never in my lifetime seen an administration that is presenting such a confused message when it comes to a national security threat.

This has gone on too long to be just the consequence of incompetence. I think this is deliberate.

I think that's a real problem.

The President immediately agreed to going into a summit without any kind of preparation or discussion about what the North Koreans were prepared to negotiate.

A summit is about whether or not both countries can ultimately agree on some kind of comprehensive approach to disarmament.

No, not at all. And if you listen to both the Republicans and Democrats who came out of those briefings, they basically said there's nothing new here.

No, not at all. And it really raises concerns about how you handle highly classified information.

The real issue is whether or not a summit can be successful or whether it is going to be a failure.

I think President Trump has a tendency to always try to blame others for the responsibilities he's got to face. This is one he's got to call.

Before you take any precipitous action, you better find out just exactly what was the basis for the search warrants that allowed the FBI to do this.

I respectfully recommend that Congress take steps to conclusively validate GAO's jurisdiction in such matters.

I think the reality is that the president is the one who got rid of the DACA program, and created this crisis.

One of the things that has happened over the course of this -- these last many months of this administration is that the Congress has gotten to the point where it simply doesn't take the president's tweets, in particular, with any degree…