Clapper questions Trump’s fitness for office after Phoenix rally ‘How much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?’ the former director of national intelligence said.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said early Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix was the most “disturbing” thing he’d ever witnessed from a president.

In an interview with CNN, Clapper said he worries about Trump’s access to the nation’s nuclear arsenal and questioned the president’s fitness for office.


“It’s hard to know where to start. It’s just so objectionable on so many levels. You know, I toiled in one capacity or another for every president since and including John F. Kennedy through President Obama and I don’t know when I’ve listened and watched something like this from a president that I found more disturbing,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon in an interview just after midnight Wednesday morning. “Having some understanding of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them, I found this downright scary and disturbing.”

Trump’s Tuesday night rally in Arizona, in which he lashed out at the media and his fellow Republicans in a defiant speech that lasted well over an hour, seemed more likely to further stoke nationwide tension than tamp it down. The president’s remarks capped a particularly tumultuous stretch in which Trump appeared to threaten North Korea with nuclear war and said that there had been “very fine people” among the white supremacist protesters whose march earlier this month in Virginia left one woman dead.

Clapper, who served as former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence until Trump’s inauguration in January, has been a regular critic of the president. In his Wednesday morning interview, Clapper said Trump exhibited a “complete intellectual, moral and ethical void” and wondered aloud “how much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?”

“He should have quit while he was ahead after last night,” Clapper said, a reference to Trump’s more muted Monday night announcement of plans to deploy more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. “But again, I think the real Trump came through.”

The former director of national intelligence warned that Trump could, “in a fit of pique,” order a nuclear strike against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and that there would be little that could stop him.

“Again, having some understanding of the levers that a president can exercise, I worry about, frankly, you know, the access to nuclear codes,” he said. “The whole system’s built to ensure a rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over, you know, exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

Clapper said the key is where Trump now stands with his own party and whether “thoughtful Republicans will reach the point where enough is enough.”

“I really question his ability to — his fitness to be in this office,” Clapper said. “And I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it. Maybe he is looking for a way out.”