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Before Coats's confirmation Trump had also already publicly disagreed with U.S. intelligence officials' assessment on Russia's interference in the 2016 election, accused them of being politically motivated against him and even suggested their tactics were reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
In his new role, Coats was responsible for walking a president he hardly knew through his daily intelligence briefing. He quickly found his boss had a short attention span for the information he was providing, current and former administration officials said. Coats struggled with how to respond when Trump veered off on unrelated tangents or bluntly disagreed with the intelligence he presented --- as he often did, the current and former senior administration officials said.
Coats found it particularly hard to hide his exasperation with Trump's insistence in the weeks after taking office that Obama had wiretapped him during the 2016 campaign, according to the officials. Over and over again Trump raised the issue, and over and over Coats told him he wasn't wiretapped, officials said, but the president didn't want to hear it.
DNI Coats: I 'in no way meant to be disrespectful' to President
JULY 21, 201806:18
"It was a recurring thing and began early on," a senior administration official who observed the exchanges said. "You could tell that Coats thought the president was crazy."
The president remained convinced he'd been a target of FBI surveillance on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and that there had been even more surveillance ordered against him, officials said.
Trump believed it was Coats's responsibility to come up with conclusive proof he had been wiretapped, make it public and criticize the alleged eavesdropping, officials said. He repeatedly demanded that Coats get the word out that the U.S. intelligence community was biased against him, officials said.
In addition to Coats, Obama administration officials, including former DNI James Clapper, have denied Trump's surveillance claim.
Yet even now the president still appears unconvinced. Earlier this month he wrote on Twitter, citing Fox News commentary: "New evidence that the Obama era team of the FBI, DOJ & CIA were working together to Spy on (and take out) President Trump, all the way back to 2015."
Complicating Coats's relationship with Trump, said officials, was that his opinions of his boss were easy for the president to read in his facial expressions.
Laughing at Trump?
Trump has opted not to receive the standard presidential intelligence briefing every day, instead taking it more intermittently. So Coats came to spend less time with Trump than his predecessors did with George W. Bush and Obama. (The DNI position was created following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)
Tensions between Trump and Coats were manageable as long as the dynamic played out behind closed doors, officials said.
Coats’s motto as DNI has been "seek the truth, speak the truth" --- a phrase he regularly repeats to underscore "his commitment to provide unbiased timely intelligence to policymakers," according to a senior intelligence official.
However, Coats didn't speak publicly as often as other members of Trump's national security team who clashed with the president, such as Tillerson.
Sessions, Coats 'Strongly Condemn' Intel Leaks, Pledge Prosecution
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That changed last July when, in a live, televised interview with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News at the Aspen Security Forum, Coats appeared to laugh at Trump when he was told in real time the president had invited Putin to Washington, D.C. Trump believed Coats had mocked him and was angry, say officials.
Afterwards, Pence stepped in to calm down Trump and counsel Coats, who then personally apologized to Trump, according to officials, and issued a public statement saying, "My admittedly awkward response was in no way meant to be disrespectful or criticize the actions of the president."
Coats's advocates inside the administration have continued to defend him to the president, officials said, including when Trump insists his top intelligence officials must be behind leaks out of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.
One former official described the fraying of the relationship between Coats and Trump as "a slow burn" that picked up speed after that July interview. Another official said Coats at that time also privately considered whether he should remain in the administration, with Pence assuring him he should.
The dynamic between the president and Coats took another hit after Trump's Dec. 19 announcement that the U.S. would withdraw all of its troops from Syria.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/mike-pence-talked-dan-coats-out-quitting-trump-administration-n985096