“In Trump’s case, it’s not really clear what the substitute is,” said Rebecca Friedman Lissner, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s basically discrediting the intelligence community and pointing to no more reputable sources.”
On Russian hacking, Trump has offered little explanation as to why he disagrees with the intelligence consensus and what evidence has led him to a different conclusion. He has kept a relatively small circle of advisers and said last year he gets his information primarily from “the shows” and believed he was more knowledgeable about topics like ISIS than military leaders.
“Intelligence has enormous implications for keeping the military safe, preventing threats against the homeland, and foreign diplomacy,” Susan Hennessey, a Brookings fellow and former attorney at the NSA, said. “What happens when it goes away, I don’t know. We could have a president who is governing based on instinct instead of evidence.”…
“There are a number of people in the intelligence community who risk their lives to do this out of a deep sense of patriotism,” she said. “If those men and women start to hear from the president that he doesn’t care so much about their info, he won’t read it, he won’t believe it, I think really talented people are going to start to think ‘Why am I doing this?'”
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