Former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan says President Donald Trump’s claims of no collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election are “hogwash,” in a scathing New York Times op-ed published a day after Trump announced he was revoking Brennan’s security clearance.

Brennan says in the piece that Trump is increasingly “desperate to protect himself,” and that is why the president made the “politically motivated” decision to revoke the clearance. Brennan, a vocal Trump critic, slams the president for his call as a candidate in July 2016 for Russia to help find missing emails of rival Hillary Clinton. He said Trump was encouraging a foreign country to collect intelligence against a U.S. citizen, and also “openly authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary against his political opponent.”

Trump Today:President defends tariffs and revokes Brennan’s security clearance.

The politics of ‘arf’: Also in the Times, the paper’s columnist Gail Collins writes that when Trump calls someone a “dog” — as Collins says he once labeled her — “he’s just reacting to a pathological fear that he’s unlovable.”

Earlier this week, Trump used the same word to describe former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who has accused the president of racism in a new memoir. In her piece Collins says Trump sent her a copy of a column she’d penned when she worked for New York Newsday, on which he’d written she was a “dog and a liar.” Collins links Trump’s calling people dogs to what she calls a hatred of animals, and also says that when he calls someone “dumb” he’s “trying to get past the fact that he’s not all that bright.”

In responding to a question about why Trump called Manigault Newman a “dog,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said he was “voicing his frustration with the fact that this person has shown a complete lack of integrity.”

Independents lean towards Democrats: Independents are leaning toward voting for Democrats in the midterm elections just under three months from election day, according to a new poll by Morning Consult. Democrats hold an eight-point edge over the GOP on the generic ballot, according to the poll. As Morning Consult writes, that’s a positive sign as the party seeks to pick up 23 House seats and flip two Senate seats to take the reins in both chambers.

Also see:What Democrats retaking Congress could mean for stocks.

Zinke places blame for California fires: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says “environmental terrorist groups” are to blame for the severity of the wildfires in California. In an interview with Breitbart News, Zinke said such groups are preventing the government from managing forests and are largely responsible for the severity of the fires.

Fire scientists and forestry experts have said climate change is the main factor behind the problem, as the Washington Post reports.

Opinion:Wildfires are only going to get worse, so we need to alter our strategies now.