After President Donald Trump ripped former President George W. Bush's advisers for not knowing "what the hell they were doing," CBS's "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan pressed him on whether he trusts National Security Adviser John Bolton, a veteran of that administration.
"President Bush had intel people that said Saddam Hussein in Iraq had nuclear weapons – had all sorts of weapons of mass destruction," Trump told Brennan.
"Guess what? Those intel people didn't know what the hell they were doing, and they got us tied up in a war that we should have never been in. And we've spent seven trillion dollars in the Middle East and we have lost lives."
Pinning him down on distrust of U.S. intelligence during the Bush admistration, Brennan then reminded President Trump about Bolton, who he had hired despite his ties to the Iraq war effort.
"Do you trust your National Security Adviser John Bolton, because he worked in the Bush administration?" Brennan asked.
"I do, and I respect John," Trump responded. "And John is not one of the people that happened to be testifying or on [U.S. intelligence staffs]."
After disagreeing with his own U.S. intelligence chiefs on their congressional testimony last week, President Trump maintained: "I have intel people, but that doesn't mean I have to agree."
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