Bill Pulte made his name giving away money on Twitter to strangers with sad stories. Now he gets to take money away from intelligence professionals with security clearances. The American Dream has never been more beautiful.
Trump wants Pulte to fire a big chunk of the national intelligence office staff. The same office that tracks nuclear programs and terrorist networks. The guy who ran viral giveaways like "Retweet this and I'll Venmo you $500" now decides who keeps access to classified information about foreign adversaries. Congress is roiled. The word roiled gets used when politicians are mad but powerless, which means they'll write strongly worded letters that Pulte will never read because he's too busy scrolling his mentions.
Pulte has zero intelligence experience unless you count the intelligence required to inherit a fortune and then give some of it away for engagement metrics. He built a following by handing out cash to people who tweeted at him. His qualifications for running national intelligence are exactly as robust as your qualifications for performing open heart surgery after watching three episodes of Grey's Anatomy.
The intelligence community spent decades building institutional knowledge about global threats. Pulte spent three years perfecting the art of the quote-tweet charity drop. These skill sets will mesh seamlessly. When analysts brief him on Chinese cyber operations, he'll probably ask if they've tried being nicer to China on social media.
Trump appointed him as acting director, which is the political equivalent of a temp assignment. Acting means you get all the authority but none of the Senate confirmation hearings where someone might ask uncomfortable questions like "What is intelligence?" or "Can you name a single country?" The position requires no expertise, only loyalty, which Pulte demonstrated by posting supportive tweets. The barrier to entry for running America's spy agencies is now lower than the barrier to entry for getting a Costco membership.
Members of Congress criticized the appointment before Trump asked Pulte to start firing people. Now they're roiled, which means the criticism will intensify from a three to a four on a ten-point scale of giving a damn. Pulte will fire whoever Trump tells him to fire because that's what acting directors do when they want to become permanent directors, and the intelligence community will be run by a man whose primary achievement was making people dance for grocery money on the internet.
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
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