Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

It’s both pathetic and laughable that Democrats, the mainstream press, and Trump critics are referring to the CIA agent who turned in Trump for his telephone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “whistleblower.”

It’s pathetic because it denigrates real whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, and William Binney. Those people are the courageous ones. They risked their careers, their liberty, and even their lives to expose criminal wrongdoing within the national-security state agencies they were working for.

That’s not what that supposed CIA agent did when he filed his complaint against Trump. He didn’t blow the whistle on his agency, the CIA, by exposing some secret dark-side practices, such as MK-Ultra drug experimentation on unsuspecting Americans, secret assassinations of Americans, secret assets within the mainstream press, or secret destruction of torture videotapes of incarcerated inmates at a top-secret CIA prison center in some former Soviet-bloc country.

If he had done that, the CIA would have come after him with all guns blaring, just as the national-security establishment has gone after Snowden and those other genuine whistleblowers. In fact, that’s how one can usually identify a genuine whistleblower. That’s obviously not happening here. Instead, the national-security establishment is hailing this “whistleblower” as being a brave and courageous hero for disclosing supposed wrongdoing by Trump, not by the CIA.

That anti-Trump CIA agent isn’t a whistleblower at all. Instead, he’s nothing more than a spy and a snitch. He is obviously a spy. After all, he works for the CIA, the premier spy agency in the world. And by turning in Trump in an obvious attempt to get him into trouble, he’s also obviously a snitch.

A “gotcha” moment

In fact, the entire episode has a “gotcha” feeling to it. For almost three years, Americans have been made to suffer under a constant stream of speeches, commentaries, op-eds, and editorials about what Trump rightly called the “collusion delusion” theory. Democrats, the mainstream press, and Trump critics were 100 percent certain that their real-life hero Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was going to find evidence that Trump conspired with Russian officials to deny Hillary Clinton her rightful place as president of the United States. They had impeachment plans set in place, ready to go.

And then Mueller dashed their hopes. His report disclosed that the collusion delusion was the biggest conspiracy theory in U.S. history, one openly promoted by Democrats, the mainstream press, and Trump critics on a daily basis for almost three years.

All they needed and wanted was an opportunity — any opportunity — to apply their impeachment process to another set of a facts. Fortunately for them, Trump himself gave them that opportunity. That supposed CIA agent was ready with a “gotcha!” and proceeded to snitch on Trump with his “whistleblower” complaint.

Trump is obviously a smart man, both businesswise and politically. But to make that telephone call to Zelensky and request him to investigate Joe Biden, while holding up a foreign aid package to Ukraine, immediately after being exonerated by Mueller of the collusion delusion allegation, was about the dumbest thing he could do. How could he not realize that his enemies would be looking for any opportunity to set their impeachment process into motion against him?

The likely explanation lies with arrogance and hubris. After Trump got his exoneration on the collusion delusion accusation, he figured that he was now all-powerful and could do whatever he wanted. The fact that he was, at the same time, exercising such dictatorial powers as raising tariffs, starting trade wars, building his Berlin Wall along the border, and imposing sanctions and embargoes, all without the consent of Congress, was also making him feel omnipotent and untouchable. His admiration for foreign dictators no doubt filled his mind with the same sense of totalitarian, untouchable power.

That’s what likely caused Trump to give his enemies the “gotcha” episode for which they were clearly thirsting. Trump turned out to be his own very worst enemy.

National security enmity toward Trump

Despite his campaign rhetoric against “endless wars,” Trump has kept U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East, where they have continued to kill, die, and wreak massive destruction. He has also authorized the continuation of the Pentagon’s and CIA’s assassination program. He has also continued the Pentagon’s and CIA’s indefinite detention and torture center at Guantanamo Bay. He has done nothing to rein in the NSA and its secret surveillance schemes. The fact is that Trump’s term in office, despite his “America First” rhetoric, has proven to be nothing more than a continuation of the Bush-Obama administrations.

That’s what he should be impeached for, but unfortunately his critics feel that those high crimes don’t rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

But it’s also true that Trump has failed to demonstrate the complete deference to authority of the national-security establishment that Hillary Clinton and other Washington, D.C., political elites have. Trump’s failure to bend the knee to the national-security establishment made him suspect from the very beginning, especially since the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI were certain that their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton, was going to be the new president.

Thus, there has been a war between Trump and the national-security establishment from even before he was elected and especially after he was elected. In a remarkable moment of candor and honesty, Congressman Charles Schumer, commenting on the war between Trump and the national-security establishment, stated, “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

One way of getting back at Trump is, of course, through assassination, a power that the Supreme Court has confirmed that the national-security state wields against American citizens, so long it is necessary to protect “national security.”

Another way of getting back at Trump is smear tactics through the use of assets within the mainstream press. The CIA’s Operation Mockingbird comes to mind.

Coup through impeachment

And other option to get back at Trump is through impeachment and conviction, especially through assets within Congress. But before any collusion-delusion proponent cries “conspiracy theory,” recall that President Eisenhower warned Americans in his 1961 Farewell Address about the threat that the “military-industrial complex” poses to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people. Actually, Ike planned to use the term “military-industrial-congressional complex” but changed his mind at the last minute. He was referring to the intimate, integrated relationship between members of Congress and the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Eisenhower is not perceived to be a “conspiracy theorist,” the term that the CIA popularized to keep people from examining the Kennedy assassination too closely.

Speaking of the Kennedy assassination, early in his administration Trump announced that he intended to comply with the deadline for releasing the CIA’s long-secret records relating to the assassination. At the very last minute, Trump folded and granted the CIA’s request for continued secrecy.

Why did Trump do that?

One possibility is that he became convinced that “national security” would be jeopardized if the American people were to see the CIA’s long-secret JFK assassination records.

Another possibility is that he struck some sort of secret negotiated deal with the CIA.

A third possibility is that he figured that if he would ingratiate himself with the CIA in the hope that they would leave him alone. If that was the case, Trump might well go down as one of the most naïve presidents in history.