What's Worse Than Devin Nunes As DNI? This Dumb Dick Right Here

Meet Rep. John Ratcliffe! And then immediately be sorry you ever heard his name!

 Whaaaaat ? Something worse than making Devin Nunes (R-Cows) the literal director of national intelligence? That cannot be!

Yes it can, and we will tell you what it is. It's nominating somebody whose brain functions at a marginally higher level than Nunes's unfortunate brain, but who is just as much of a conspiracy-minded batshit Trump loyalist as Nunes is. USA! USA! USA! (Don't fool yourself into thinking Donald Trump's first choice wasn't to just go with the dumbfuck congressman from the dairy farm and see what happens, as had been reported. Natasha Bertrand reports that he offered Nunes the job first, but Nunes is holding out for something even more powerful and intelligence-y, like CIA director. God help us all.)

So hey, sure, John Ratcliffe! The congressman from Texas! He's a Trump-fellating doorstop of a human being! Why not him!

As has been long rumored, Dan Coats, one of the only people left in the Trump administration who seems vaguely sane and was willing to speak the truth about hostile election interference from foreign powers, has outlived his usefulness to President Shitmouth, and will be quit-firing himself out the door on August 15. In his resignation letter, Coats thanked Donald Trump for the privilege of serving THE NATION and noted that one of his final moves on his way out the door was to establish an election security executive to coordinate the government's response to election security threats . Take that as you will, but considering Trump's well-known aversion to protecting elections from Russian reacharounds, we're going to take Coats mentioning it in his resignation letter as a gigantic "fuck you."

Trump announced all of this in a tweet on Sunday, because he is a very serious president who makes announcements on Twitter:

"The Acting Director will be named shortly." That caught a lot of people's attention, since by law the acting director is supposed to be a career official named Sue Gordon, who currently serves as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (and whom career people have reportedly been pushing to become the next DNI). If Trump tries to pull some bullshit and shoehorn some other paste-eating loyalist in there, while we wait to see if Ratcliffe is confirmed by a Senate that has completely abdicated its duties of advice and consent, well that will just be some fuckery . Expect congressional Democrats to go apeshit.

Anyway, Trump apparently got real excited when he saw Ratcliffe, who has zero experience for a job like DNI but who some Republicans think is "smart," question Robert Mueller the other day. From his seat in the House Judiciary Committee, Ratcliffe yelled tripe at Mueller about how, while he agrees that no one should be "above the law," he believes Mueller placed Trump "below the law," whatever the holy hell that means. He yapped that if it wasn't Mueller's job to decide Donald Trump's guilt, then he wasn't allowed to say "does not exonerate" either, because REASONS, OK? Ratcliffe says Mueller violated every rule in the book (not sure which book), and mostly he seems mad that Mueller wrote a report in the first place, because reports have a well-known bias against Donald Trump.

It was some grandstanding bullshit.

Representative John Ratcliffe Grandstands During Robert Mueller Testimony | MSNBC    www.youtube.com 

From his seat in the House Intelligence Committee (he's on both), Ratcliffe played more gotcha games with Mueller, pivoting to barking out conspiracy theories about the Steele Dossier, because Republicans are pretty sure Hillary Clinton paid the Russians for a fake dossier about Donald Trump in order to steal the election from ... herself? It doesn't make sense, even as conspiracy theories go, but Republicans don't make sense, as sentient human beings go.

WATCH: Rep. John Ratcliffe's full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony    www.youtube.com 

On Sunday morning, before Trump tweeted his announcement, Ratcliffe went on Fox News and said Robert Mueller doesn't even know anything about the Mueller Report, and that the Mueller Report was actually written by "Hillary Clinton's de facto legal team." So yeah, motherfucker has been auditioning for this job for a while now.

John Ratcliffe was the mayor of Heath, Texas, population 8,000-ish, which obviously gives him all the experience he needs to run the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. His website lists other accomplishments, like how he was a US attorney and prosecutor of terrorists who arrested 300 Mexican rapists in ONE DAY or something along those lines. (Sounds like a busy day! Bet he didn't even get to watch Lou Dobbs that night.)

Of course, people who are good at reading government databases and cross-checking such claims are doing that and finding Ratcliffe's actual record lacking:

Seen a lot of Ratcliffe quotes about being a former terrorism prosecutor, but looking at various prosecution databa… https: //t.co/1dpxLQDQWw

— Matthew Miller (@Matthew Miller) 1564407052.0 

So let's just go with John Ratcliffe was the mayor of Heath, Texas. Yee haw! Yippie ki yay! TEXAS JUSTICE, Y'ALL.

The Washington Post   ticks off a few more things we should know about Ratcliffe:

• Thinks FBI is BIASSSSSS against Trump, and seems to cosign the theory that Russian meddling in 2016 might have been more helpful to Hillary Clinton than it was to Trump, which, again, makes zero fucking sense, but oh well.

• Is totally down with Attorney General Bill Barr's campaign to investigate the investigators, so basically Ratcliffe's confirmation would just put another Trump-sucking sycophant in a position of high power to entertain Trump's grievances and lick Trump's wounds for him, and oh yeah, turn the national security state into Trump's little plaything, even more than it already is.

• Thinks the FISA warrants against Carter Page were predicated mostly on the Steele Dossier, a conspiracy theory you can debunk by READING THE FUCKING 412 PAGES OF FISA WARRANTS. Wonkette has done that. Has John Ratcliffe?

In other words, CHRIST, what a fucking idiot.

To close out this post, here is reaction from former acting CIA director John McLaughlin:

Ratcliffe would be the first DNI without significant intelligence or ambassadorial experience. Dan Coats has done s… https: //t.co/B1iybUtmdE

— john mclaughlin (@john mclaughlin) 1564362207.0 

And here's just a fucking horrifying thread about what DNI John Ratcliffe would be like, if he is confirmed by the Senate:

Ratcliffe as DNI, like Barr at Justice, like Trump's appointees to the Supreme Court and McConnell in the Senate, w… https: //t.co/bCKvUYSxCp

— David Rothkopf (@David Rothkopf) 1564349392.0 

Happy Monday, y'all!

[ Washington Post ]

 Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter   RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!  

 Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU, our dear readers. If you love Wonkette, SUPPORT WONKETTE.