Crepitus
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2018
- 74,672
- 69,593
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He's a bought and paid for tRumpling zombie.I agree. No one with any experience wants to ruin his or her career working for tRump, and Ratliff is a rabid tRumpling. That's what tRump wants. Not loyalty to the country or the Constitution. Loyalty to him personally.DNI Dan Coats was fired on July 28. His firing was likely connected to the intelligence community's response to Trump's telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25, 2019. That response earned Trump two Articles of Impeachment. Since Coats' dismissal seven months ago, the U.S. has been without a permanent DNI.
CNN reports, "President Donald Trump said on Friday that he intends to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican from Texas, as his permanent director of national intelligence, the second time the President has attempted to make the loyalist lawmaker his spy chief."
CNN continued, "Ratcliffe had been nominated as Trump's DNI pick after Dan Coats stepped down from the post in July 2019, but the Texas congressman withdrew his name from consideration after lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about his qualifications."
Trump withdrew Ratcliffe to serve as his intelligence chief in August because he padded his résumé. Also, there was bipartisan concerns about his experience, meaning lacking thereof. Also, Ratcliffe misrepresented his role in prosecuting terrorism and immigration cases.
Ratcliffe's résumé is just as bereft of intelligence experience now as he was in July. Trump nominated him anyway. One possible reason: Qualified intelligence supervisors want nothing to do with Trump's concept of intelligence.
Ratcliffe, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee is a consumer of intelligence products. So, to say Ratcliffe is experienced in intelligence is akin to saying that a person who drives a car has an intimate knowledge of how a car is made.
Ratcliffe's two main qualifications for the job are, 1)He is extremely loyal to Trump. 2)He provided a stalwart defense of Trump in the House impeachment inquiries.
For these reasons, Ratcliffe is less likely to provide intelligence Trump doesn't like. Failure to provide pleasant intelligence to the President cost former DNI's their jobs, Dan Coats and Joseph Maguire. A loyal political hack with zero intelligence experience, Richard Grenell, is the current acting DNI. He won't give Trump unpleasant intelligence, either.
Ratcliff is a prosecutor by trade.
His talents should enable him to clean up the intel agencies of deep state hacks.
The Intel agencies don't need cleaning up, the tRump *administration* does.