Donald Trump just got kicked in the teeth by his own House GOP stooge Doug Collins
This week Donald Trump threw a tantrum and fired his own recently handpicked Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, for having dared to brief Congress about the latest developments in the Trump-Russia election conspiracy. The trouble for Trump is that he’s running out of warm bodies to replace all the people he’s chasing away.
Trump has announced that current U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell will serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence. Grenell is a slime ball, and he’s also almost comically unqualified for the DNI position. This has led to a lot of doomsday punditry about how Trump is now magically taking over as emperor. But in reality, Trump appeared to have temporarily tapped Grenell simply because there’s no one else to fill the role.
Trump decided to offer the permanent DNI position to his loyal House Republican stooge Doug Collins, who is best known for his incoherently fast paced babbling in Trump’s defense during the House impeachment proceedings. But CNN is reporting that Collins is turning Trump down. This isn’t surprising. Collins wanted Trump to appoint him to the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, but Trump appointed Kelly Loeffler instead, because Trump always rewards his donors instead of his loyalists. Collins is now running a primary challenge against Loeffler, in what amounts to something of a GOP civil war.
Donald Trump appeared to believe he could clean up the Collins-Loeffler mess by giving Collins a promotion. This suggests that Trump doesn’t care who ends up being his Director of National Intelligence; he just wants to fill the role with any warm body, so the vacancy will cease being a scandal for him. Trump never listened to anyone who previously held the DNI role, so this doesn’t come as a surprise.
What’s interesting is that Collins is clearly unwilling to help Trump out by taking the gig, after Trump failed to show any loyalty to Collins. Perhaps Trump’s stooges are finally starting to figure out that they’ll never be rewarded for destroying themselves in Trump’s name. Also, if Collins did take the DNI job, only for Trump to lose the election, the job would vanish at the end of the year. You have to wonder if Collins fears Trump is going to lose.
