Personally, I think Trump should revoke all former intelligence officials and military leaders’ security clearances — especially those who become public partisans. They do not need security clearances anymore. Besides, these former intelligence and military leaders have proven themselves too irresponsible to be entrusted with the secretive security clearance they’ve been permitted to keep (as a courtesy for their prior service to the country).

What Brennan, et al. are trying to do is to have their cake and eat it: they want to enjoy the benefits of being retired and use their status to undermine the duly elected leadership of the country. Trying to have one’s cake and eat it didn’t work well for Marie Antoinette and it shouldn’t work for the pampered princes of our military-industrial-intelligence complex either. These individuals no longer have skin in the game and therefore their judgments are suspect. If they want to retain their access and influence events, like Generals Grant and Sherman before them, they should either re-join the service or abandon their clearances and run for political office.

The only thing worse than having a career civil service bureaucracy that is too big to fail is having a mass of retired former government officials who, after leaving government, opt to remain embedded within The Swamp (while contributing little substantive help to the country).