Trump DNI pick's real mission isn't what president is claiming: ex-GOP operative

Former GOP operative Tim Miller took a moment on MS NOW's "Deadline: White House" to lay into President Donald Trump's move to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard with his controversial housing finance administrator Bill Pulte — a man often called Trump's "attack dog," and, Miller pointed out, has absolutely no qualifications to coordinate national intelligence.

"I'm going to start with you because there's nothing for an intelligence person to say about this person," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "This is a political hack ... what happens next?"

Miller agreed, saying that he is likely the most unqualified Cabinet-level nominee in the history of the United States, even including Pete Hegseth, who at least served in the military before being tapped for Secretary of Defense. "Bill Pulte has no experience by this at all. Calling him a political hack is even, you know, kind of too kind to him."

"It's mean to us political hacks!" chimed in Wallace, to general laughter around the panel.

Worse, Miller continued, "he was a corrupt grifter" whose main experience before Trump appointed him to head up housing finance was pushing "meme stocks" and "crypto rug pulls."

Then, he said, at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, "The main thing he did was use his access to mortgage documents. He also made himself the head of Freddie and Fannie to go after Trump's political foes. I mean, that's like the extent of his political work actually, going after political foes with dubious attacks based on the way that they filed their mortgage documents." That, he said, is the extent of his experience in government operations.

And that's probably by design, Miller added.

"I don't think that he's in this job to actually do the job of the Director of National Intelligence," said Miller, speculating that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other high-ranking officials will do that job for him. Rather, "I think he's in there to do the dirty work, to do the sole job of now using his expanded access to the information about Americans to try to go after Donald Trump's political foes. I think that will be basically his only duty there."

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