Trump and his intel chiefs are worlds apart on ISIS, North Korea, Russia, border.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's annual worldwide threats hearing, featuring public testimony Tuesday from the heads of the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies, seemed at times to be taking place on a different planet than the one President Donald Trump inhabits.
Point by point, the country's top intelligence leaders demolished some of the key national security claims Trump has made since he took office.
The president said ISIS has been defeated.
The intelligence leaders said the terror group had thousands of fighters and was still plotting attacks.
The president said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat.
The intelligence chiefs said North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons.
The president cast doubt on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
The intelligence experts said the Russians had been so successful they were plotting even more sophisticated efforts in 2020.
Perhaps most strikingly, in hours of discussion of security threats, the intelligence chiefs did not once mention the need for a wall along the southern border, which
Trump has portrayed as the single most pressing need facing the country.
The written threats assessment made clear that most of the illicit drugs entering the U.S. from the south come through legal ports of entry.