President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to serve as the director of the CIA.
Ratcliffe worked as Trump’s DNI from 2020 to 2021 and was a House representative for a district in Texas from 2015 to 2020. Back in 2004, President George W. Bush appointed Ratcliffe as the Chief of Anti-Terrorism and National Security for the Eastern District of Texas, and he was later promoted to the Attorney General for the district, where he worked from 2007 to 2008.
The incoming CIA director is a supporter of sweeping government surveillance powers as he lobbied for the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law that allows the government to spy on American citizens without a warrant. In 2023, Ratcliffe and several other former Trump officials, including Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr, sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to support the extension.
Ratcliffe is known as a Trump loyalist for pushing back against unfounded allegations about Russian election interference in his role at the DNI. Recently, he has been pushing claims about Iran allegedly hacking the Trump campaign and plotting to kill the president-elect, a charge Tehran has strongly denied. Ratcliffe has used the allegations to call for the US to join Israel in taking a harder line against Iran.
Ratcliffe is also a China hawk and has called for the US to prepare for a “confrontation” with Beijing. “If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point, it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal published in December 2020.
And since it is his last term the MAGA people and libertarian hopefuls can go suck it. Will the real Mr. Trump please stand up.
Trump repeated, again and again, that he would do this and that, stopping wars, fixing the economy, shutting the border, firing this and that and yet . . . he not ONCE said he would stop the genocide in Gaza, the most crucial issue to be addressed to prevent a major Middle East (if not WW3!) conflagration! You don't criticize those who control you.
This article is about government surveillance powers and people appointed that favor such broad surveillance, not Gaza. And Trump promised to curtail such abuse.
So, Ratcliffe becomes the actual chief executive of the USA.
Second to M Adelson.
Another rat.
"When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?"
Peter, Paul and Mary
That's great – making America "Great Again" by picking the people who helped make it "NOT GREAT"! Enthusiasm for Trump will slowly subside with the picking of these Israel puppets/warmongers!
I thought enthusiasm would subside the last time he was president and picked puppets and war hawks, but it didn't. His supporters do not even pay attention, it seems.
In the end, the hypocrisy ties into the consensus among elites that privacy, safety, freedom, and all that good stuff are privileges reserved for, well, them. By surveilling, tracking, and generally relentlessly subjugating the lowlier earth-dwelling masses, the ruling class seeks to ensure that no significant structural challenges will ever arise to such ideas as that a single individual should be valued at $276bn
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/2/15/elon-musk-is-a-security-risk
They can tap into someone's cell or laptop and get all the information they want, even turning on microphones and cameras, but how dare anyone track their jets( which is public knowledge anyway).
So Trump's vision of "Make America Great Again" is…war, war, war…
I'm shocked, shocked…
Good – this means the US is doomed. About damn time… Send the troops to Iran – fry their asses (the US troops, I mean.) Get a few aircraft carrier battle groups sunk – then they won't be around to threaten China.
I knew nothing would change.