U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor Angel Families who have lost family members to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026.
Former intelligence analyst and ex-FBI official Michael Feinberg said the spate of firings, dismissals and retirements in President Donald Trump’s second term is not so one-sided.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is “unnecessary and or too big,” and would “like to see it smaller”
“I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, about those who worked in the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations.
But Feinberg said serious employees, those with intelligence and a hint of patriotism, are already a step ahead and likely leaving for their own reasons.
“[I]n the intelligence community, bad leadership drives out good leadership because the people who take on those roles at the FBI, the CIA, … other places, they're principled, they're patriotic, they're idealistic. And when they see somebody come in taking a wrecking ball to the agency's ability to manifest and epitomize those qualities, they realize it's not somewhere they could work anymore,” Feinberg told MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace. “And all of a sudden you get a lot of lackeys. And as I said earlier, you get people who are not going to tell the president when he's wrong and the president's going to make bad decisions.”
Wallace made a reference to a recent New York Times article reporting that Trump largely ignored his entire national security team and instead took trusted the claims of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the run up to Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, which has lifted gas and food prices and put Republicans’ hold on the House and Senate in jeopardy.
“It's going to get worse,” Feinberg assured as more professionals evacuate federal rooms filling up with imbeciles.
“The intelligence community … are Ph.D. holders. They are people who acutely understand social science research methods. They are people who speak multiple languages, who understand how to use cultural norms, to recruit somebody to want to work with the United States. There are more soft skills than hard skills … but the former is overwhelmingly more important and intelligent people, patriotic people, and they don't want to work for partisan idiots,” said Feinberg.
“I don't know how to put it more straightforward than that,” Feinberg added. “And not only do they not want to do the work, they can't do it because people like Bill Pulte or Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel or John Ratcliffe don't want to let them.”
Yeah,” agreed Wallace. “Yeah, it's about as blunt as that.”