In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of "being really dumb."

Was Schumer referring to Trump's ideology, philosophy, or knowledge about economics or foreign policy?

None of the above. According to an article in The Hill, he told Rachel Maddow on her show that Trump was dumb for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia.

"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you…. He's being really dumb to do this."

Maddow then asked Schumer what he thought the intelligence community might do to Trump to get back at him.

Schumer's response was fascinating and revealing. He responded, "I don't know."

So, Schumer knows that there are six ways from Sunday for the intelligence community to get back at Trump but then, a few seconds later, can't enumerate even one of those ways? That makes no sense unless he was a bit scared to go into the details for fear that one of those "six ways from Sunday" might be employed against him.

In any event, Schumer's point is a good one, even if he is reluctant to clarify it. No president since John F. Kennedy has dared to take on the CIA or the rest of the national security establishment or to operate outside the bounds of permissible parameters within the paradigm of the national-security state.

That might have been because post-JFK presidents just happened to find themselves on the same page as the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

But another possibility is that the one mentioned by Schumer: They knew that if they opposed the national-security establishment at a fundamental level, they would be subjected to retaliatory measures.

Kennedy had come into office as a standard Cold Warrior and as a supporter of the national-security state system, the totalitarian-like apparatus that was grafted onto America's federal governmental system after World War II. But after he was set up and betrayed by the CIA with respect to the Bay of Pigs invasion, he was at loggerheads with that agency for the rest of his presidency. After the Bay of Pigs, he vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, who, in a rather unusual twist of fate, would later be appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's murder.