Donald Trump pointed to the "powder keg" that is the Middle East when he vowed Wednesday to replace some of the people who have been providing presidential intelligence updates should he win the election.
Trump sat in on his first intelligence briefing Wednesday at the FBI building in New York City. Before that meeting, he told Fox News he doesn't have a lot of trust in the nation's intelligence gathering machine.
"Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country," Trump said. "Look what's happened over the last 10 years, look what's happened over the years. It's been catastrophic. And in fact, I won't use some of the people that are your standards.
"I won't use them because they've made such bad decisions. You look at Iraq, you look at the Middle East, it's a total powder keg. If we would have never touched it, it would have been a lot better. We would have been much better off."
Trump added that U.S. military spending in the Middle East has reached around $4 trillion.
The real estate mogul praised retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who joined Trump during Wednesday's intelligence briefing. Flynn is a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
"I have great people and Gen. Flynn is one of them," Trump told Fox.
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