He aso said, "Sounds about right" to a tweet by an MSNBC contributor implying that Donald Trump should be executed.
Really, Michael?
How can we understand this? Perhaps it's no more than the fact that he's 77 years old. And that he suffered a massive stroke in 2018, which left him a victim of aphasia, which impairs the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. He carries a laminated card that reads:
I have aphasia from a stroke. Aphasia means I have trouble understanding you, reading, writing and speaking. It is a medical condition. I am intelligent but need some help with language. This can be frustrating for me. And on the back, it says, to help me, I may confuse yes/no answers. Give me a minute to respond, shout - shut off loud noises so I can concentrate, ask me if I understand, give me eye contact when speaking.
If that's all it is, I sincerely wish him well in his retirement. It seems that those outlandish statements were made on a computer in response to expressions of others. Somone should keep him from playing on the computer. His politics are well known. He endorsed Joe Biden, saying, "“If there is another term for Trump, I don’t know what happens to America.”
It's odd, though, that he comes into the news at a time when we're observing a frenzied effort by the Justice Department and its FBI to prevent the uncovering of their spying on American citizens. Its thought by some that Trump had documents on this in his Florida home raided by the FBI. Shortly after he was elected president, Trump said that domestic surveillance of American citizens should the “No. 1” topic of inquiry until we can find out “what the hell is going on” with it.
Poor Michael Hayden knows all too well about this. From his Wikipedia entry:
During his tenure as director, he oversaw the controversial NSA surveillance of technological communications between persons in the United States and alleged foreign terrorist groups. Numerous commentators have accused Hayden of lying to congress, and breaking the law.[40] According ThinkProgress, Hayden misled Congress in a 2002 testimony, where he testified that any surveillance of persons in the United States was consistent with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. ThinkProgress stated that "at the time of his statements, Hayden was fully aware of the presidential order to conduct warrantless domestic spying issued the previous year. But Hayden didn’t feel as though he needed to share that with Congress.
Unfortunately, General Hayden is being nominated under troubling circumstances as the architect and chief defender of a program of wiretapping and collection of phone records outside of FISA oversight. This is a program that is still accountable to no one and no law. Over the last six months, Americans have learned that the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans without judicial approval.
Michael Hayden was a founding father of our Deep State.