The MintPress prediction
========================

The MintPress prediction is a forecast John Kiriakou raises unprompted and against himself. Shortly after the 2016 election the outlet interviewed him, Thomas Drake and the Justice Department whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, putting the same question to each: were things going to get better or worse for whistleblowers under Donald Trump?

He flags his own answer before giving it. "I said, I was the only one who said this, and I was foolish and wrong in retrospect, but I said, I can't imagine a scenario where anything could be worse than Barack Obama. I can't imagine that Donald Trump would be worse."

The correction is four words long: "And then Donald Trump was worse." What limited it, on his account, was arithmetic rather than restraint, "the only thing that saved us from Trump was the fact that he was only in office for four years."

He keeps the concession separate from his position on Obama, which the same conversation states at its harshest: eight Espionage Act prosecutions of people who spoke to the press, against three in the ninety-two years before, "nearly three times the number of all US presidents combined. That was not an accident."

See also

- Thomas Drake
- Jesselyn Radack
- Barack Obama
- Donald Trump
- Espionage Act
