Donald Trump’s DNI scandal just took a whole new ugly turn
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is a cabinet-level position created in the aftermath of 9/11 as a means to coordinate information provided by the 17 different American intelligence-gathering agencies. It is a full time job replacing what used to be the part time provenance of the director of the CIA. The idea was to keep inter-agency rivalries from interfering with the flow of information. In the age before Trump the idea was a good one.
Trump promised to replace his appallingly bad acting DNI, internet troll Richard Grenell, from a pool of five people who he claimed were “all people you know, all people you respect.” I for one thought, “oh goody, I can hardly wait.” And then the child-raping monster went and appointed the perfectly awful congressman from Texas, John Ratcliffe, right on schedule.
You may remember Ratcliffe from the house Judiciary impeachment hearings. He was the awful, perpetually angry little man full of counterfeit rage at everyone he questioned. He was the virtue-signaling cretin who tried to get ambassador Bill Taylor to commit to the notion that Voldomyr Zelinsky (while he was sitting right next to Trump) was lying when he said he felt no pressure from Trump. He was the pathetic little weasel who asserted that the whistleblower had serially lied in his sworn complaint to the Inspector General. This is the partisan tool, one of the “people you all respect,” that Trump wants in the vital role of Director of National Intelligence.
Considering that Trump’s penultimate acting DNI, Joseph McGuire, was fired for allowing one of his subordinates to dare suggest that it really was the Russians after all who influenced the 2016 election and were about to do it again, there can be little doubt in the poisonous mind of Ratcliffe which side his bread is buttered on. From this point forward we can count on Ratcliffe’s Soviet-era style “intelligence” being synthesized cabinet-side as a political prop for Trump first and in the national interest last. The DNI is about to become the Commissar of Political Orthodoxy in the thrall of Donald Trump.
Well, at least Ratcliffe has a background in intelligence. Wait a moment, no he doesn’t. As former CIA case officer now Congresswoman from Virginia Abigail Spanberger puts it, “I find it quite astounding that the president would nominate someone without an intelligence background.” I would too, if it were any president other than the child-raping monster Donald Trump.
Ratcliffe, political puppet, religious right-winger and running dog for Donald Trump, is among the worst possible choices for DNI. Only Jim Jordan would be marginally worse than he. It will be my pleasure to see John Ratcliffe summarily dismissed on January 21st, 2021. As he will have to resign his seat as Congressman from Texas to take this new post, it will also be my pleasure to see this child-rapist’s acolyte justly unemployed as well.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.