Trump’s DNI Pick John Ratcliffe Once Hosted Wallbuilders for a Local Prayer Breakfast

This came across the wire today.

 

John Ratcliffe is Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence to replace Dan Coats. In addition to having little intelligence background or experience, questioning Russia’s role in the 2016 election and inflating his resume, he is (or at least was) sympathetic to Christian nationalism.

It seems fair to go back to Ratcliffe’s days as a mayor of Heath, TX since his public service experience is so thin. He has been a Congressman since 2014 when he defeated 91 year old Ralph Hall and conservative Republican in a primary. There is no serious Democratic resistance in the district. In that race, David Barton endorsed Hall.

Given Ratcliffe’s rise to power, no doubt now all is forgiven. In addition to a Trump loyalist, Russia doubter, Rep. Ratcliffe may be sympathetic to Christian nationalism.

Hat tip to Ron West’s blog.

 

33 thoughts on “Trump’s DNI Pick John Ratcliffe Once Hosted Wallbuilders for a Local Prayer Breakfast”

  1. Trump wants two opposing things to be true. 1. He claims that the media was so mean to Ratcliffe that he chose to withdraw to protect his family. 2 While at the same time saying that it’s the media’s job to vet the candidates for him. Hey, Trump, ever think that if you vet them privately first you actually spare them from this public embarrassment? I thought not.

    1. And Trump still thinks he can choose the Acting DNI Director. But according to Lawfare, he can’t. Unlike the Dept of Justice, the word shall (instead of may) is used in 50 U.S.C. § 3026(a)(6) that says:

      (6) The Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence shall act for, and exercise the powers of, the Director of National Intelligence … during a vacancy in the position of Director of National Intelligence.

      Apparently the current Deputy DNI is not seen as a Trump loyalist. Awww…

  3. O/T The Court Evangelicals have no problem with Trump’s Racism.
    https://apnews.com/6224548fdbb645c4b72e3bfac5476ea1
    Of course, they don’t… They have too much to lose.

    Robert Jeffress: “He [Trump] judges people on whether they support him. If you embrace him, he’ll embrace you. If you attack him, he’ll attack you. That’s the definition of colorblind.”

    No, you twit. That’s the definition of blind loyalty.

      1. That’s a fascinating read, which confirms much of what I have heard about Patheos.

        1. Yes. The other thing I’ve heard but not nailed down, is that Disqus comments are being censored, not by the authors of the posts, but by Patheos.

          1. Yes, the Patheos Nazi-Robocensor routinely nixes comments for no apparent reason, driving everyone nuts.

            For example, Hemant Mehta’s “Friendly Atheist” blog has a piece today on a Baptist minister upset that the forward to his anti-porn book was written by now-non-Christian-and-soon-to-be-divorcing Josh Harris. Guess what word the Patheos robo-censor wouldn’t allow?

            https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/08/01/baptist-author-i-dont-want-joshua-harris-foreword-ruining-my-anti-porn-book/

          2. OMG. So it is true about the filters! And as usual, the commenters immediately outsmarted the filters – from prawn to Cyrillic. I love FA and his commenters! Thanks for the confirmation.

          4. The real scandal is that a Baptist minister invited Josh Harris to write a foreword to his book. There are plenty of self-centered narcissists who married in their early 20s who don’t have a formal education and lack training in biblical scholarship who likewise have harmful opinions about marriage and relationships. One must wonder why such voices are so important to the Baptist minister.

          7. “I am not seeing it…” Exactly. Pretty effective, eh?

            “Censorship” infers “purpose.” I think Patheos’ purpose here is to just drive folks crazy and impede the flow of information. Why are they doing this? Are they applying this uniformly across all “Belief Traditions” (e.g. blog channels) or just those that don’t fit the conservative/evangelistic bent of the new owners? I don’t know.

            Read through the comments at Hemant’s site and see the tricks folks employed to get around the ban on the unacceptable word “porn.”

          8. Also, go back to Ben’s blog and click on Join the Comments at the end. The first one mentions you. Then go down till you get to Dragoness Eclectic. She and the rest of the comments, including Ben’s replies, discuss the censorship and how his Disqus account was still attached to the censorship filters when he moved to this new blog and Ben had to switch commenting systems for now.

          9. Starting next month, I believe Disqus will discontinue all their Disqus Chanels due to multiple TOS violations. This, Disqus claims, will allow them to improve their remaining services.

            In the past three years, I have encountered at least two dozen fraudulent Disqus accounts opened for the sole purpose of cyberstalking and harassing me. Disqus is a little late…

          10. Good grief. I know you had some troubles for awhile, but I didn’t realize it extended to the Channels, too.

          11. I can’t say it would surprise me at this point. Whatever is verified should really be more widely reported. Patheos should have to respond and others need to know before continuing to blog, or worse, moving their blog over there.

          13. Some of the Forbidden Words are: he’ll, rum, womb, and virgin. The latter two would make it difficult to speak of Jesus’ birth, one would think.

          14. Can I just say that as censors, business people, and just regular human beings, Patheos management really sucks. Womb? Virgin? Among other things, that leaves talking about olive oil out. I wonder if hymen got a pass?

      2. Thanks for the link, this helps make some sense of rumors I heard. I am thinking that Gospel for Asia might be my nemesis. They got two blogs over there and might be paying for them. I can imagine GFA paying big bucks to get all of that content removed. They probably had the most to gain.

        1. Either GfA or NRA. The timing is before NRA’s implosion and they both have the big bucks. I’m 80% GfA and 20% NRA.

        2. Either GfA or NRA. The timing is before NRA’s implosion and they both have the big bucks. I’m 80% GfA and 20% NRA.

  4. In case anyone was wondering, the actual laws governing the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) state quite clearly that

    Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise.

    It will be interesting to see how some GOP senators react to the impossibility of marrying the law’s definition of extensive expertise to what’s now on offer in the form of John Ratcliffe.

  5. In addition to recognizing that the State Department’s functions have been taken over by Fox “News,” we must now, for the sake of accuracy, put quotation marks around the names of certain federal agencies:

    Department of “Justice.”
    Environmental “Protection” Agency.
    Department of Homeland “Security.”

    And now: Director of National “Intelligence.”

  6. Trump sure knows how to pick ’em. Fire anybody competent to do the job, then find the barrel and root around under it for a while, until you come up with someone like Ratcliffe–no experience in intelligence, no experience in government service except as mayor of Heath (where?), Texas, with an inflated resume, and a partisan Republican with strong fundamentalist Christian leanings, besides. Perfect! If we get another four years of this, we might as well declare ourselves a Russian client state. There will be nothing keeping them out.

  7. So, a “Christian nationalist” in addition to wanted to take all the land from We The People and handing it over to corporations? Sounds like a perfect selection for King The Donald.

    1. While I agree with the thinness, I didn’t realize until recently this element
      Christian of nationalism. He may not either

    2. While I agree with the thinness, I didn’t realize until recently this element
      Christian of nationalism. He may not either

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