President Donald Trump is "playing with fire" by retweeting three anti-Muslim videos from a rightwing U.K. group "Britain First," former CIA Director Leon Panetta said Thursday.
Panetta told CNN's "The Situation Room" that "this is a dangerous game to play and the president, frankly, ought to know better."
"He may not know it, but he's playing with fire," Panetta said. "Anytime you have those kinds of anti-Muslim videos — and now he's part of spreading that video around the world — there is a danger that you can create disruptions abroad and demonstrations at U.S. embassies and other embassies, and really jeopardize lives."
Panetta also blamed the White House staff for not checking out the posts beforehand.
"This is just extremely reckless and careless on the part of the president but more importantly, frankly, the White House chief of staff and . . . others have to at least have some kind of check on these tweets," he said.
"If the president is going to tweet something thatm – I think, the president ought to stop doing because it is undermining his credibility and undermining, frankly, his ability to get things done by virtue of what he's saying – but if he's going to do that, there ought to be at least a check system as to what he's going to tweet.
"So the State Department can be checked, the Defense Department can be checked to make sure that he's not doing something that is careless and reckless and could jeopardize lives," he continued.
"You do not want the president of the United States as part of some kind of anti-Muslim conspiracy to jeopardize American lives. That's crazy."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.