Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks didn't reach for a new insult. She reached for an old one, one that belonged to Hillary Clinton herself.

The Iowa Republican went on television Thursday to respond after Clinton appeared on a podcast and openly encouraged intelligence community workers to resist Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte by slow-walking or refusing to share classified information with him. Miller-Meeks had a one-word verdict, borrowed directly from Clinton's 2016 vocabulary.

As Just the News reported, Miller-Meeks appeared on the Just the News, No Noise TV show and delivered her response plainly:

"I'm going to use Hillary Clinton's own words: deplorable. That is disgusting behavior from a former secretary of state, from a former first lady, from a former senator."

The exchange captures something broader than a cable-news back-and-forth. A former secretary of state, the same official the FBI once found to be "extremely careless" with classified material, is now urging federal employees to sabotage the lawful flow of intelligence to a sitting president's appointee. And she did it casually, on a podcast, as if encouraging bureaucratic insubordination were just another political talking point.

What Clinton said on the podcast

Clinton made her comments Wednesday on the "Democracy Docket" podcast, hosted by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias. She called Pulte's appointment "deeply insulting to the intelligence community" and said he is "manifestly unqualified under the statute to hold that position."

Then she went further. Clinton said people should be "worried about everything" with Pulte serving as acting DNI. And she expressed hope that "career and even political appointees in various of the agencies" are "slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte."

She also questioned why no lawsuit has been filed to challenge his appointment.

Clinton is hardly alone among Democrats in criticizing the move. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has also taken aim at the administration's intelligence leadership. Warner told Fox News last month that the appointment amounted to handing "the keys of all of our intelligence agencies over" to "somebody so grossly unqualified who's shown he's willing to take information and misuse it, secret information."

Miller-Meeks fires back on national security grounds

Miller-Meeks framed her objection in national security terms, not partisan ones. She pointed to the current threat environment, including the World Cup and the 250th anniversary of Independence Day, as reasons the president needs "every tool in his tool box."

"We need to have all ears to the ground to prevent tragedies from happening, such as the 9/11 tragedy."

That comparison was deliberate. The September 11 attacks exposed catastrophic failures in intelligence sharing between agencies. Clinton's call for federal employees to withhold intelligence from the acting DNI invites exactly the kind of institutional breakdown that the post-9/11 reforms were designed to prevent.

Miller-Meeks added simply: "It certainly is unconscionable that she would say this."

The irony of Clinton lecturing on classified material

The backdrop makes Clinton's posture especially difficult to defend. In 2016, the FBI found evidence that Clinton and her colleagues were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." That finding, issued by then-Director James Comey, remains one of the most significant official rebukes of a senior government official's treatment of classified material in modern American history.

Clinton was not charged, but the FBI's language was unsparing. The woman who mishandled classified information on a private email server is now positioning herself as a guardian of intelligence community standards, and encouraging government employees to defy the chain of command in the name of protecting secrets.

The contradiction speaks for itself. But it doesn't end there. Clinton's 2016 campaign also hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which became central to the discredited Steele dossier and the broader Russia-collusion narrative. A federal judge later ruled that Fusion GPS had to turn over 22 emails to special counsel John Durham's investigation, a probe that examined alleged misconduct surrounding the 2016 Russian interference inquiry. Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting, accused of misrepresenting who he was working for when he brought unverified claims about a supposed Trump-Russia server connection.

That history does not disqualify Clinton from having opinions about intelligence policy. But it does make her current posture, lecturing the country about who should and shouldn't be trusted with classified material, land with a particular kind of hollowness.

Pulte's early moves at ODNI

Bill Pulte assumed the acting DNI role after Tulsi Gabbard announced in May that she would step down to help care for her husband as he battles cancer. President Trump selected Pulte to replace her.

Since taking the position, Pulte has laid off staffers within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, carrying out the administration's broader effort to streamline the federal workforce. Democrats have seized on those layoffs as evidence that Pulte is unfit for the role. But the layoffs are consistent with the president's stated priorities, and the acting DNI serves at the president's discretion.

Clinton and Warner have framed Pulte's appointment as reckless. Neither has identified a specific instance in which Pulte mishandled intelligence. Warner alleged on Fox News that Pulte has "shown he's willing to take information and misuse it," but the basis for that claim was not detailed in his remarks. The broader Democratic leadership has struggled to articulate a coherent alternative vision for the intelligence community beyond opposing whomever the president appoints.

Encouraging resistance, or sabotage?

There is a meaningful difference between criticizing a political appointment and calling on federal employees to defy it. Clinton crossed that line on Wednesday.

Saying she hopes intelligence workers are "slow-walking or refusing to share information" with the acting DNI is not dissent. It is an invitation to sabotage the lawful operation of the executive branch. Career federal employees serve the office, not the preferences of former officials who lost elections.

The intelligence community has faced years of criticism, from the right and, at times, from the left, over politicization. Clinton's comments feed directly into that concern. When a former secretary of state publicly encourages bureaucratic resistance to a sitting president's intelligence appointee, it validates every worry about an unaccountable permanent class within the national security apparatus.

Miller-Meeks's invocation of Clinton's own "deplorable" label was pointed for a reason. In 2016, Clinton used that word to dismiss tens of millions of American voters. Now a Republican congresswoman has returned it to sender, this time aimed at conduct, not people.

The pattern of Democratic leaders demanding accountability from others while evading it themselves is not new. But Clinton's version of it carries a unique weight, given her own documented record with classified material and the intelligence community.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over this episode. Clinton cited a statute she says disqualifies Pulte, but she did not name it. No lawsuit challenging his appointment has been filed, despite her suggestion that one should be. And neither Clinton nor Warner has pointed to a specific instance of Pulte misusing intelligence, only to their judgment that he lacks the qualifications for the job.

The number of ODNI staffers laid off under Pulte has not been publicly specified. Nor is it clear whether Clinton's podcast remarks reflect a coordinated Democratic strategy or a freelance intervention by a former official who remains deeply engaged in opposing the current administration.

What is clear is this: a former secretary of state went on a podcast and told intelligence workers to withhold information from the person the president chose to lead them. She did this while carrying a public record the FBI itself described as "extremely careless" with classified material.

Miller-Meeks called it deplorable. She was being generous.