Yesterday President Elect Trump was briefed by the Office of the Director of National Security. A few months ago we learned that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a computer hack in the hopes of swaying the Presidential election toward Mr. Trump and this was the subject of the briefing.

After yesterday’s meeting Mr. Trump termed the meeting “constructive” and claimed respect for the intelligence community. But he tweeted very different, and disturbing messages. Last Tuesday he claimed the briefing was delayed to Friday and darkly hinted that the extra day gave them more time to “build a case.” It wasn’t true: the meeting was always scheduled for Friday.

And in the hours before the briefing he called it a witch hunt.

As proof he offers the “fact” that the intelligence community “got it wrong” in 2002 when they told the George W. Bush administration that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The previous link bears a look as it explains that we went to war against Iraq in 2003 because the Bush administration “cherry picked” intelligence information and depended on a source the intelligence community nicknamed “Curveball”. Curveball later confessed to lying about his “intelligence.”

But more to the point, when Mr. Trump tweets these uninformed and ignorant rants, he discounts the hard work of thousands of talented and hard working civil servants. I’ve known dozens of people who have devoted their careers to the work that Mr. Trump dismisses.

And even if you believe him when he claims the intelligence community got it wrong in Iraq, you have to admit the intelligence community got it right in 1963 when nuclear missles were discovered in Cuba. They got it right when we found and killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. And they’ve gotten it right in thousands of instances we’ll never hear about.

Their patriotism dwarfs your thin skin and they are owed an apology.