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Senate Intelligence Committee passes Ratcliffe nomination to full Senate on party-line vote

The Republican-held Senate seems likely to confirm Ratcliffe, which is a big departure from the congressman’s fortunes only last year. When originally nominated for the role, Ratcliffe faced significant opposition in the Republican Senate due to his lack of apparent intelligence expertise, his role as hyper-partisan Trump fluffer (including, specifically, his willingness to politicize intelligence in misleading ways), and most glaringly the discovery that Ratcliffe appears to have been lying, egregiously, about his own resume.

Ratcliffe remains unqualified, hyper-political and a liar. The difference now appears to be a Republican loathing of current “acting” “part-time” DNI Richard Grenell that runs so deep that, in the eyes of Ratcliffe’s former detractors, even putting a chewed shoe in the post would be preferable to letting Grenell pretend to run things. Grenell is widely seen by critics as a devoted Trump yes-man installed in the role to bury or tweak intelligence findings displeasing to Trump; Ratcliffe’s behavior can be expected to be worse.

How far down the rabbit hole is Ratcliffe? The new would-be director of national intelligence follows “Q”-themed conspiracy theorists on Twitter. The man is willing to go down some deep holes to find people praising Dear Leader, which is precisely why Trump has confidence he’s the right man for the current job.

That’s the short version. As the pandemic unfolds and Congress is distracted with 100,000 deaths, then possibly 200,000 deaths, Trump continues to purge government of any official seen as potentially disloyal, instead installing numerous Rudy Giuliani clones into those roles to act as protection (in the mob sense) and oversight saboteurs. We can expect Ratcliffe to continue to push the administration effort to invent sketchily premised intelligence charges claiming Trump’s problems are due to the machinations of China, Democrats, or both. We can expect to come out of this with Ratcliffe committing at least one known crime, when all is said and done, because when you have a conspiracy-minded yes man with broad powers to manipulate government (see: Mike Pompeo, William Barr, etc., etc.) laws tend to be seen as optional.

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