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Given his background, those words carried weight and contributed to the climate of fear and division that burdens our democracy today, including within the intelligence agencies.

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Hayden also signed a letter last August urging Americans to vote against Donald Trump. Anything Hayden says about politics today must therefore be interpreted in that context. He is hardly a disinterested observer, and clearly resents the fact that the American people ignored his unsolicited advice.

Now, Hayden tells the Business Insider that Breitbart News has an illegitimate worldview. He was apparently objecting to Breitbart News storylast week documenting mainstream media reports that the Obama administration had conducted surveillance at Trump Tower and of people connected to the Trump campaign, and that it had disseminated the products of that surveillance.

Hayden admitted that he had not examinedthose media reports themselves. Nevertheless, he attacked Breitbart, Drudge and others:

The retired four-star Air Force general said too that theres an amazing consistency on numerous subjects between the information disseminated by Russian media outlets and that of conservative American sources like the Drudge Report, radio and television host Sean Hannity, and Breitbart.

You have a Breitbart News story essentially launching the Starfleet of the federal government about one of the most horrible political scandals in American history, if true, Hayden said, adding that it was very troubling the president seeming to value Breitbart reports over data compiled by intelligence agencies.

Breitbart doesnt do any creative journalism it just moves the parts around, Hayden continued. And I havent done this personally, but Ive heard others say, when you dig into the Breitbart sources, the articles dont really say that.

They have a worldview, and they are playing with it, he said. I think its an illegitimate worldview, and I think its a non-fact-based worldview. Its a worldview in which preexisting visions seem to be being used to distort the fact pattern that exists.

The proper address for Haydens complaints is the mainstream media, and possibly the Obama administration. Regardless, the views he considers illegitimateareenjoyed by the 45 million unique visitors who read our website every month.

The fact that Hayden and other disgruntled members of the Washington establishment still refuse to acknowledge the basic validity of a different perspective outside the Beltway and the mainstream media is precisely why Trump won in November.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the most influential people in news media in 2016. His new book,How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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NeverTrumper Michael Hayden of CIA, NSA: Breitbart News ... - Breitbart News