The biggest national security threat the United States faces at this moment is President Donald Trump.
Nothing illustrates that threat more clearly than the president’s pick of MAGA attack dog Bill Pulte, who has zero experience in the intelligence field, as acting czar of all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.
This choice is a neon sign flashing out Trump’s utter scorn for and distrust of the U.S. intel community. His willingness to ignore them or destroy them is a major reason for his dangerous failures in dealing with Russia, China and his war of choice in Iran.
“At a time when the threat stream couldn’t be higher, and the FIFA matches are about to start, an appointment like this, even if temporary, is extremely concerning,” I was told by former nine-term U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D.-Calif., who was ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
If GOP senators who know better fail to join a bipartisan revolt against this presidential choice, they are equally guilty of enhancing the chance of serious terrorist attacks on the homeland and further U.S. disasters abroad.
An intense Trump ally who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte is best known for using his current post to pursue highly suspect criminal referrals for alleged mortgage fraud against Trump foes. They include New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Sen. Adam Schiff, along with Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whose removal would advance the president’s effort to politicize the Fed.
Pulte will also keep his old position — as if the complex director of national intelligence post is a mere add-on.
To give you a bit more flavor of Pulte’s persona, the well-sourced Axios news site revealed in April that before Trump posted “a highly controversial image of himself as a Christ-like healer,” he discussed the meme with Pulte. Two Trump advisers told Axios that it was Pulte who brought the image to the president’s attention.
So now Trump is effectively telling Americans: “Forget (he would substitute another F-word here) having a director of national intelligence who can coordinate the agencies tasked with protecting the homeland. I want a capo who will advance my campaign of ‘revenge and retribution’ and slavishly promote my image.”
Indeed, by choosing Pulte, Trump is only continuing his open attack on U.S. intelligence agencies. Ever since the CIA and FBI correctly concluded that Russia had tried to intervene in the 2016 election, he has vilified them as part of a “deep state” that seeks to undermine his administration.
Pulte’s predecessor was the former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who often mouthed Russian propaganda. She was picked not because of any competence in the intel field, but because Trump wanted to use her to pursue his perceived foes. That included her highly improper interference in an investigation of alleged 2020 election irregularities in Georgia.
Part of Gabbard’s task was to echo Trump’s unending grievance over claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Apparently, she didn’t try hard enough to abuse the role of DNI, even though she publicly accused former President Barack Obama of pushing a narrative on the 2016 election he “knew to be false.”
So she was pushed out. Now, Pulte has the chance to do a better job.
This terrible distortion of the role intelligence plays has left Trump wide open to foreign manipulation.
Who can forget how he stood beside Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit in 2018 and said publicly that he trusted the Russian ex-KGB colonel more than his own intelligence agencies, even as Putin was mouthing blatant Russian propaganda?
Any intel analyses that contradict Trump’s gut instincts are dismissed. Other sources, such as a detailed bipartisan report by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee that concluded there was attempted Russian election interference in 2016 — are also ignored.
Trump is famous for disdaining the president’s regular intelligence briefings, in large part because — as he constantly repeats — he believes he knows more than the briefers. Such incredible naiveté is based in large part on his conviction that his personal relationship with Putin (and China’s Xi Jinping) guarantees that he can best them.
Unfortunately, as the world sees clearly, the opposite is true. Trump’s refusal to accept vital information has left him unprepared to deter these strongmen. His willful ignorance endangers us all.
It is why he keeps insisting Ukraine has no cards to counter Putin’s aggression. It is why he refuses to grasp Putin’s domestic weakness, and Ukraine’s amazing achievements in drone warfare. It is why he refuses to recognize that Putin is determined to undermine Europe and the United States.
It is heavily responsible for his misinterpretation of Xi’s thinking and his refusal to stand up for Taiwan. It is why he misunderstands the vital need to ally with European and Asian democracies to restrain China’s expansionist urges.
And today, it explains Trump’s stunning failure in his misbegotten Iran war. Someone who is so disinterested in details of Iran’s nuclear program (and of past nuclear diplomacy) is ill-equipped to halt it. Someone who rejects intel briefings but dispatches equally ignorant “negotiators” like real estate magnate Steve Witkoff to Iran, Israel and Russia cannot succeed in preventing a bomb.
Consider the Pulte appointment an irrefutable message: This president does not give a damn about your security, but only about retribution and enhancing his own power.
Those GOP senators who know better but refuse to join Democrats in curbing Trump’s threats to Americans’ safety are enabling his destruction of U.S. security institutions.
Their choice is clear. Stop Pulte and other such Trump nominations now — or share the blame when their boss’s blindness facilitates terror attacks at home and U.S. failures abroad.
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