It’s been said you can tell a lot about a man by his friends and the company he keeps. There’s also a school of thought that you can tell a man by who his enemies are.

No doubt, all of those apply to Donald Trump, as we are reminded constantly by the media in one form or another.

Recently a name from the past has been a critic: James Clapper, the former Director of National intelligence.

Clapper has jumped into the fray to bring down Trump by stepping to the tune that Trump is mentally unfit for the presidency. It’s been floated before, but now it’s repetitive as a talking point, and undoubtedly it’s the next in line as the Russian investigations of 10 months have yielded nothing.

Clapper hasn’t been around since resigning in late December 2016. It could be said he’s speaking out now as his name has come up in the investigations into the matters of the Clintons, James Comey and Loretta Lynch.

Considering Clapper’s known history of lying to a congressional body, he should be quiet.

In 2013, Clapper was asked if intelligence authorities collected data on Americans. He answered, “No, Sir, not willingly.” He may have gotten by with that lie but for the antics of Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks that showed the agency had not only gathered phone records of millions of Americans but also had them stored.

The explanations for the lies changed over a short span of time. Clapper initially said he didn’t lie. He then offered that he meant to say they didn’t look at Americans’ emails. Next, he admitted his response was “the least untruthful” he could give to Congress. Lastly, in his letter to Congress he admitted his words were “clearly erroneous.”

After all of this, Clapper spoke to a group of government officials and contractors at a summit for two major industry groups and complained: “It has been very disappointing to have my integrity questioned because of a mistake.”

In the speech, he went on to complain about the leaks to the news media (where have we heard that lately)?

Profoundly, Clapper said such intelligence could be gathered on Americans without risk of embarrassment or any threat to civil liberties, saying with a reported chuckle, “We call this immaculate collection.”

Secondly is Mitch McConnell, who has spoken out with his latest friction with Trump over the failure of the healthcare bill in the Senate.

He spoke to a Kentucky Rotary Club recently and said: “Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before. … I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process” (per CNN affiliate WCPO, which covered the event).

Reportedly, McConnell claimed: “Congress is working as it should, and that voters should allow the process to play itself out before passing judgment.” He continued: “The reason I think people think we’re under-performing is because of too many artificial deadlines unrelated to the reality of the Legislature which may have not been understood.”

What nonsense of artificial deadlines and expecting too much too soon? McConnell’s herd was among the Republicans who have been yelling about repealing an replacing Obamacare for over seven years, and now Trump is expecting a change too soon?

Last but not least, Hillary Clinton is back with her newest book this week of “What Happened.” Naturally, the tantalizing audio book is repeatedly being played with the excerpt where she accuses Trump of getting into her space at the debate and presents a picture of him stalking her.

Hopefully for Hillary, writing this book and getting out her venom was cathartic, because it appears she still doesn’t get it.

There is a myriad of reasons, not to be detailed here, why Hillary Clinton isn’t president, and none has anything to do with a debate stage.

In Jon Rappoport’s blog entitled “Hillary’s new book: Its Never My Fault,” July 31, 2017, he lists a lot of the reasons Hillary’s 2016 run failed.

Yes, identifying enemies is as important as friends when it comes to judgment.

Betty Arenson is a Valencia resident who believes in the Constitution in its entirety and that laws should be upheld and apply to everyone equally.