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Senate Republicans aren’t thrilled about Donald Trump’s less-than-qualified pick for director of national intelligence, but you know the drill: Senate Republicans put loyalty to Trump over their own judgment. Trump’s nominee, Rep. John Ratcliffe, falls short of the legal requirement that a DNI have “extensive national security experience,” and sources told Time magazine that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr warned the White House against nominating Ratcliffe to begin with, saying he was too partisan a choice.
Partisan indeed. This is someone who used his House committee assignment to audition for the DNI job, using his allotted time to question former special counsel Robert Mueller to attack the entire existence of a special counsel investigation into Trump. When he doesn’t have a high-profile House hearing to use to show Trump how good a lackey he’d be in an intelligence job, Ratcliffe heads to Fox News to demonstrate his loyalty.
After Trump announced the Ratcliffe pick, Burr remained cool, saying, “I don’t know John Ratcliffe” but “I look forward to getting to know him, and if I get an official nomination, I’ll process it through the committee.” Other Republicans took a similar approach, not condemning the choice but not embracing it, either. Sen. Susan Collins said the DNI should be someone “with the integrity and skill and ability to bring all the members of the intelligence community together,” which clearly does not describe Ratcliffe, but equally clearly Collins will decide it does if Republicans need her vote. Just as Collins pulled a Collins, Sen. Marco Rubio was right on-brand, expressing concern not about Ratcliffe’s partisanship but about the Democratic response to it.
It’s conceivable that Burr will slow-walk the confirmation process and create time for unflattering information about Ratcliffe to come to light. But if Trump holds firm that this is his guy, Republicans will once again fall in line, despite their misgivings.
