Former CIA director John Brennan appeared on an MSNBC panel on Monday to react to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and said that he feels embarrassed to be a white man.
Moments before Brennan’s comment, former Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill she’s “never seen so many whiny white men calling themselves victims” until CPAC 2021. McCaskill was criticizing Republican lawmakers who alleged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) turned down National Guard support during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol storming and claims by conservative pundits that left-wing “Antifa” activists were behind the incident.
Following McCaskill’s remarks, Brennan said, “To Claire’s point, I’m increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days in light of what I see my other white males saying.”
“But it just shows that with very few exceptions, like [Sen.] Mitt Romney, [Sen.] Liz Cheney, [and Rep.] Adam Kinzinger, there are so few Republicans in Congress who value truth, honesty and integrity,” Brennan continued. “And so they’ll continue to gaslight the country the way that Donald Trump did.”
“The fact that this has such security and safety implications for the American public and for the members of Congress, again, as Claire said, it is just a disgusting display of craven politics that really should have no place in the United States in 2021,” Brennan added.
During his tenure as CIA director, Brennan faced controversy of his own. In 2014, Brennan faced criticism after investigations revealed the CIA had accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers. Brennan had repeatedly denied allegations of the CIA surveillance on Senate computers.
Brennan also faced criticism in 2014 for defending CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions, despite a Senate report that found the techniques rarely yielded valuable information. Brennan called the Senate report “flawed,” “partisan,” and “frustrating,” according to the New York Times.
Brennan also repeatedly traded barbs with President Donald Trump during Trump’s presidency. In July 2017, Brennan called on government officials to defy Trump’s orders if he fired Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was tasked with investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. No such claims of collusion were ever established by Mueller’s investigation.
In May 2020, former CIA officer and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz alleged Brennan was concealing “high-quality intelligence” that went against claims Russia was working to support Trump in 2016. Fleitz said Brennan hid intel supporting Russian motives to help Clinton, while he promoted “flawed substandard information” that instead implicated a Russian effort to help Trump.
