Rep. Adam Schiff (D. Calif.) said on Monday that President Donald Trump is putting Russian President Vladimir Putin before the interests of the United States.
MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell brought up Trump's comments on Saturday about trusting Putin when he claimed Russia did not meddle in the 2016 elections. Mitchell said Trump's remarks went against conclusions made by U.S. intelligence agencies and his own Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).
Schiff, Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed with the "Andrea Mitchell Reports" host and argued Trump insinuated with his comments that the intelligence agencies are political and can't be trusted.
"He's saying basically ... 'you just can't trust them because they're part of a political establishment, but now I've got my own political establishment. I'm doing my own politicization of the intelligence agencies so now I can rely on them,'" Schiff said.
"That’s a horrible message that nobody within the IC [intelligence community] believes or accepts, but it denigrates the agencies nonetheless," Schiff continued. "This is just how he operates."
Schiff said Trump is trying to portray the message that everything that came before him was "awful, and bad, and wrong," and "now everything is great."
"He doesn’t put the country first ... He’s putting Vladimir Putin first," Schiff said. "He’s putting his own–that is, Donald Trump's own–narrow, personal self-interest before the country, and that is a terrible quality to have in the President of the United States."