Sacked

Donald Trump abruptly fired his director of national intelligence yesterday in a rage, not because of his job performance, but because he thought the man was disloyal for telling Congress that Russia would prefer to see the President re-elected (details here).

The episode aptly demonstrates how the paranoid Trump ranks personal loyalty above all other qualities. It doesn't matter if your work poses a risk to America's national security, as long as you are slavishly loyal to him, as if he was the monarch.

Trump named the current ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, to serve as acting director of national intelligence, effective immediately. Grenell is well known in Washington as being slavishly loyal to Trump.

Per the linked article: "Grenell’s appointment is likely to exacerbate tensions between the president and members of the intelligence community, who have been frequent targets of Trump’s ire. Current and former officials questioned Grenell’s qualifications to lead the intelligence agencies and said his loyalty to Trump appeared to be the reason for his appointment.

"'Nothing in Grenell’s background suggests that he has the skill set or the experience to be an effective leader of the intelligence community,' said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Trump and President Barack Obama... His chief attribute seems to be that President Trump views him as unfailingly loyal — hardly sufficient to make someone qualified to perform the duties of the DNI."

Grenell is openly albeit quietly gay, one of only a handful of LGBT appointees in Trump's administration. With a presidency so hostile to LGBT rights and one that actively seeks to roll back LGBT advances and to return LGBT Americans to a second-class status with fewer rights, it's amazing any LGBT person would serve an administration that finds them so repugnant.