Trump Chaos Hits a Breaking Point: Political Guru

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Bill Pulte to become the director of national intelligence is just one area in which he is making the United States “weaker,” one foreign policy analyst says.

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David Rothkopf, appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, said there’s a good argument to be made that Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is Trump’s worst nominee to date.

“He is purely being picked because he will do exactly what Trump says,” Rothkopf continued, mentioning Pulte’s work to build mortgage fraud allegations against perceived Trump rivals like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook.

“Trump wants him there because he thinks that the intel community can help him invalidate upcoming elections, which is his main job,” Rothkopf said. “And he also thinks he can help him go after his adversaries. Possibly, he thinks he can help him shred information that might be incriminating to Trump.”

The reaction to Pulte’s nomination among the intelligence experts Rothkopf spoke to came down to one word: “outraged.”

“When I talk to people at the CIA, when I talk to people who are formerly at the [Office of the] Director of National Intelligence… I spoke to somebody from the [Defense Intelligence Agency] over the weekend. They are outraged. They are outraged,” Rothkopf said.

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“There are very few jobs in the U.S. government where there is a specific experience requirement written into the job description—written into the legislation creating the job. But the director of national intelligence job is considered so important that it’s written in, and Pulte doesn’t make the grade,“ Rothkopf added. ”So that’s why he is ‘acting.’“

Trump’s admission that he wants Pulte, 38, to gut the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is especially concerning, Rothkopf continued. In fact, that’s what some U.S. adversaries want.

“So, he guts the [National Security Council], he guts the Department of Defense—he decapitates it. He’s gutting the intelligence agencies. He has attacked the alliances that are the foundation of international stability and strength for the past 80 years. He has embraced our enemies. He is putting crazy programs in the defense budget, including hundreds of millions of dollars to his own sons’ companies,“Rothkopf said, referencing how Donald Jr. and Eric are on the board of a company that is selling drones to the Air Force. Don Jr. is also an investor in a separate drone parts maker that the Trump administration hopes to strike a deal with.

“Add it all up. Vladimir Putin, if he sat with his generals in the planning room at the Kremlin, could not come up with a way to do more damage to America’s national security than Donald Trump has done in the first year and a half of this presidency.”

Rothkopf said that Trump is doing similar damage on several other fronts.

“I could make the same case on the economy. I could make the same case on the environment. I could make the same case on social services. I could make the same case on social unity in the United States, or on healthcare in the United States, or on the environment,” he said. “Across the board, the only thing Donald Trump is successfully doing is making the United States weaker and at greater risk.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.