Restocking the swamp

Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” but his Cabinet of Misfit Toys was a spectacular fail. And as those incompetent appointments flame out, he’s restocking with even worse. Take Bill Pulte. Please.

Remember the short career of Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI)? Gabbard was a former Democrat, combat veteran and Hindu from Hawaii, with open ties to Vladimir Putin. That latter relationship raised doubts about her loyalty to serving American interests, but the Republican Senate didn’t blink an eye in her confirmation. Servile loyalty to the Trumpster himself was all that mattered.

As with all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, political opportunist Gabbard had a pretty thin resume for the critical responsibilities of her office. One Congressional colleague observed that she “couldn’t pass a security clearance check, because she’s too compromised by Russia. Yet Trump picked her to run the whole thing.”

Gabbard promptly weaponized DNI 2.0 to help carry out his revenge campaign. She vowed to expose vast conspiracies involving the 2020 election, the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations, Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and UFOs, but studiously avoided much of any intelligence gathering and briefings for her somnambulant president.

She notably perjured herself before Congress, by claiming that no classified information was discussed during Pete Hegseth’s group chats on his private phone about military attack plans. Gabbard was also on Team Trump for election undermining – both past coverups and future voter suppression.

When Gabbard resigned, Trump announced that his current Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte will also serve as America’s Director of National Intelligence. That means, Mr. Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac is now our nation’s top intelligence official. With a slew of forever wars underway, here’s how bad that is:

Despite the legal requirement that the DNI must have, “extensive national security expertise,” Trump assigned a 37-year-old nepo-baby homebuilding heir to oversee all of our nation’s spies, who are skulking around in 18 separate intelligence agencies. Not only is Pulte deficient in “extensive expertise,” he has absolutely no applicable experience whatsoever.

But Pulte does have the credentials Trump is looking for in a Cabinet official. He concocted the schemes to prosecute Trump’s perceived political enemies under ridiculous “mortgage fraud” and “cost overrun” accusations. Political Hack Pulte abused his position to access private mortgage records to help in Trump’s quest for revenge.

Most notably, he unethically enabled Trump’s vendetta against Federal Reserve Board members who refused to politicize regulation of our country’s independent monetary system. Pulte also used confidential information to help Trump impugn the New York Attorney General, who had the temerity to believe that no one should be above the law.

This empty suit is now responsible for coordinating and integrating the data gathered by our extensive U.S. Intelligence Community, and for providing objective, non-political intelligence assessments to the President. Fat chance of that ever happening, since Pulte is an unyielding advocate for Trump’s unhinged foreign policy agenda.

PS: Just yesterday, Trump nominated archcriminal Todd Blanche as his new Attorney General/Personal Attorney. That would be the guy who carried out the Epstein file cover-up, designed the $1.8 billion insurrectionist fund, and granted permanent tax immunity for the Trump Crime Family.

Meet the two latest stars in Trump’s constellation of the “worst of the worst.”