CNN Opinion: For Trump, it's ego over security when it comes to intelligence

[CousinIT]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/opinions/grenell-appointment-intelligence-elections-vinograd/index.html

Editor's Note: Samantha Vinograd is a CNN national security analyst. She is a senior adviser at the University of Delaware's Biden Institute, which is not affiliated with the Biden campaign. Vinograd served on President Barack Obama's National Security Council from 2009 to 2013 and at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush. Follow her @sam_vinograd. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

(CNN)President Donald Trump's not a fan of intelligence. He's repeatedly told the American people not to trust the intelligence community and to rely on his own, personal analysis about key national security issues instead.

Foreign leaders still rely on intelligence, and if they are looking at an intelligence assessment of the US right now, it would undoubtedly include one high confidence assessment: Trump's mission to get reelected involves a coordinated strategy to transform our intelligence community into his personal brain trust, even if it means helping Russian President Vladimir Putin and hurting our country.

In his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that he would surround himself with the "best people," but in fact he is picking those whose real qualification is that they will serve to address his own, personal insecurities.

His recent decision to appoint Ambassador Richard Grenell — former US spokesman at the UN — as acting Director of National Intelligence is a case in point. Grenell, a Trump loyalist who has no intelligence experience, faces a steep learning curve, to put it mildly. The fact that he'll also, for the time being, serve as the US ambassador to Germany and special envoy to Kosovo and Serbia makes the acting DNI job seems more like an extracurricular activity, leaving enough time for some specific pet, presidential projects.

For Trump, inexperience may be a virtue, and either because Grenell is new to intelligence, a lack of knowledge of DNI ethics and procedures, or just a plain old desire to keep pleasing Trump, Grenell may be more willing to block and tackle intelligence that Trump doesn't want released (before Grenell's appointment, there were already reports of Ukraine-related information being withheld from Congress). He can then forge ahead with an internal witch hunt for anyone who could upset Trump with assessments that he doesn't like — CBS has reported that Grenell has already hired former Devin Nunes staffer Kashyap Patel to "clean house."

[SWBTATTReg]

1. So rump is engaging in his own 'red scare' and cleaning house (against his own people?)...

Perhaps the Senate will finally do its job and dump rump as they should have?

Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He is known for alleging that numerous Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

[smirkymonkey]

2. This is just infuriating!

I am so damned sick of this shit I could - and will - scream. I have fucking had it.

[Midnight Writer]

3. I don't see ego so much as corruption. With lots of enablers.