Trump often sounds like the guy popping off down at the end of the bar; he’s transformed Brennan, who is supposed to be the consummate career intelligence official, into the guy down at the other end of the bar.
Advantage: Trump. The president always benefits from the fact that his brand depends on violating norms, whereas if his opponents are baited into violating norms in return, they diminish themselves and their cause.
So it is that a former CIA director is combating a president who maintains the top echelons of the intelligence establishment hated him by demonstrating his hatred for him. Once Brennan made the decision to begin letting loose, he inevitably got sucked into the vortex of the #Resistance — that’s where the Twitter followers, the cable hits, and the adulation of half the political spectrum are.
