Pray that the president of the United States, avid cable TV watcher that he is, flipped to C-SPAN for some of Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
The assessment of the planet's biggest national security threats produced by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and his colleagues was starkly at odds with what Trump delivers daily to the American people.
Trump delusion: "We have defeated ISIS in Syria," as he put it in a tweet last month announcing a withdrawal of troops from the ISIS hotbed. (He kinda sorta backtracked later.)
Reality, via Coats: "ISIS still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria, and it maintains eight branches, more than a dozen networks, and thousands of dispersed supporters around the world."
Delusion: "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea," the President declared following his June summit with Kim Jong-Un.
Reality: "We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities."
Delusion: Climate change is bunk, fabricated by liberals if not the Chinese.
Reality: "Global human security" challenges include the "negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change ... (producing) extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation."
Meantime, the southern border, which has Trump's hair on fire, merits a few paragraphs at the end of a 42-page document. The professionals don't have time or energy for fabricated fears.
