DHAKA: In an op-ed written for the New York Times, former CIA Director Michael Morell denounced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and deemed him a threat to US national security should he be voted into office.

“The character traits he (Trump) has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief,” said Morell, reports The Jerusalem Post.

“These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.”

These traits, he said, not only pose a future danger, but are already damaging US national security and being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, Morell pointed out, was a career intelligence officer “trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them”.

In turn, he used these skills to reel Trump in during the primaries via compliments, and Trump responded as Putin foresaw.

Trump referred to Putin as a “great leader” on the campaign trail, ignoring his less-than-exemplary human rights record and driving of the Russian economy downhill.

Furthermore, by “endorsing Russian espionage against the US, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States,” his policy positions explicitly align with Russian, rather than American interests, Morell claimed.

BDST: 1742 HRS, AUG 06, 2016
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