As The Washington Post put it in February 2020—shortly after the hire was made—Trump was dazzled by Grenell’s “sycophantic pandering.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S marketing campaign to purge the federal government of anybody not blindly loyal to him continued Wednesday with the appointment of Richard Grenell as performing director of nationwide intelligence. Mr. Grenell, who at present serves as ambassador to Germany, is manifestly unqualified for the job, even in an performing capability. He has no expertise in intelligence or in managing massive organizations — just like the 17 businesses that may now report back to him.
Mr. Grenell has however received the president’s favor in a well-known approach: by loudly praising him and his agenda on Fox Information applications and social media. Most likely, he has satisfied Mr. Trump he will be counted on to place the president’s private and political pursuits above these of nationwide safety — one thing the 2 earlier DNIs wouldn’t reliably do.
Properly, yeah, that tracks. Another excuse Trump preferred him? Grenell is probably going a white supremacist.
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Amidst a Twitter squabble with Democratic Reps. Ted Lieu and Eric Swalwell on Friday, former Mike Pence aide and born once more anti-Trumper Olivia Troye spilled the tea on Grenell’s extremist leanings.
The trade began with a racist jab at Lieu and ended with me questioning why Vladimir Putin has but to behave to de-Nazify the USA.
For the nontweeters:
GRENELL: “Ted LIEu spent years delivering the Beijing line that Hunter Biden’s laptop computer was Russian disinformation.
“China celebrated his lies. @tedlieu”
LIEU: “Pricey @RichardGrenell: I served on lively obligation to defend your proper to say silly stuff.
“To the extent you now randomly point out China due to my race, then you definately’re saying silly, racist shit.
“Additionally, did you provide you with LIEu all by your self? Spectacular.”
Grenell’s take is a bit of ironic, after all, provided that Donald Trump spent years delivering the Moscow line that … nicely, choose one. He delivered each conceivable Moscow line at one time or one other. However, hey, possibly Putin was really a superb man all alongside till President Biden pushed him too far by refusing to pull the U.S. out of NATO as Trump had promised.
Earlier than lengthy, Rep. Swalwell entered the fray with some genuinely astonishing data about Grenell, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany.
For the nontweeters:
SWALWELL: “Hey @tedlieu, do you know @RichardGrenell used to hang around with Nazis when he was presupposed to be representing us in Germany?”
Okay, nicely, that’s alarming. A U.S. ambassador to Germany was allegedly rubbing greasy elbows with bona fide Nazis? That’s not a superb look.
Oh, however it will get higher. Enter Troye, who broke with the Trump administration earlier than the 2020 election over its shambolic and unserious response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the nontweeters:
LIEU: “To be trustworthy, I don’t actually know a lot about Grennell [sic]. (I simply view him as a boring web troll). Do you’ve proof of this?”
TROYE: “I do. Whereas in his position as Ambassador, Grennell tried to get Mike Pence to attend a white supremacist gathering throughout certainly one of his abroad journeys.”
Wait, is Pence white sufficient for a white supremacist gathering? (I’m solely kidding, after all. If he have been any whiter, Elmer’s Glue would possibly sue him for trademark infringement.)
I assume Mom put the kibosh on any Nazi picnics Pence may need needed to attend, so the one story right here is that one of many Trump administration’s high intelligence advisers might very nicely have been a Nazi sympathizer. You understand, common stuff.
However hey, this nation has some completely made-up Republican crises to take care of—like vital race idea and Mr. Potato Head’s unceremoniously french-fried schwanzstucker—so we’ll get to purging Nazis from our authorities a bit later.
Makes whole sense, proper?
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