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During an exclusive interview with investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson on her television show Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson on Sunday night, Attkisson asked President Trump about Richard Grenell’s work as acting Director of National Intelligence (NDI) since acquiring that position three months ago.
Attkisson: Until Richard Grenell was made the Acting Director of National Intelligence by you, reporters, members of Congress, [and] members of the public had asked to see a lot of this information [wrongdoing by the FBI and other intelligence officials] really for three years, but it was kept hidden. What do you make of that?…
Trump: Richard Grenell is a superstar. He had guts, he had courage to do what he did. We have another superstar going in as you know, John Ratcliffe. He just got approved yesterday and he’ll be taking over as of Tuesday. Richard Grenell has done one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen. I mean, in a short period of time, he exposed them as being corrupt. Look, they were trying to do a takedown of the president of the United States illegally. It’s all illegal….
Attkisson: But why did it take Richard Grenell? You had other people who work [and] serve this administration.
Trump: … They didn’t do their job. Dan Coats [who served as Trump’s DNI from 2017 to 2019] should have never let that happen. Dan Coats sat there for two years, didn’t do his job…. Jeff Sessions [who served as Trump’s Attorney General from 2017 to 2018] was a disaster as attorney general. Should have never been attorney general, was not qualified. He’s not mentally qualified to be attorney general. He was the biggest problem. I mean, look. Jeff Sessions put people in place that were a disaster. They took over. They’ve [the Deep State] always had the Department of Justice, but they kept it under Jeff Sessions….
Later in his response, Trump went back to Grenell’s exposure of the Deep State’s attempted overthrow of the duly elected president.
Trump: When you look at what Richard Grenell has done in eight weeks, these people didn’t do anything for two and a half years. They should have been exposing this. So I’m very disappointed in certain people. And some people have done a phenomenal job, but what am I doing? I’m fighting the deep state. I’m fighting the swamp. And I said I was doing it. And I’m exposing the swamp. I think if it keeps going the way I’m going … if it keeps going the way it’s going, I have a chance to break the deep state. It’s a vicious group of people. [Emphasis added.]
Who, or what, exactly, is the Deep State? Steve Baldwin, a former California state assemblyman and former executive director for the Council for National Policy and Young Americans for Freedom, has part of the answer. In an op-ed published by the Western Journal two weeks ago, Baldwin said the term refers to “cabals of long-time government bureaucrats and officials who are part of the permanent political establishment…. Their ideology is on the left…. Those who hold this ideology typically favor subverting U.S. interests to international entities such as the United Nations.”
He named some of the more prominent members: John Brennan, who served as President Obama’s DNI; Nellie Ohr (the wife of demoted Justice Department official Bruce Ohr), who worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election (the opposition-research firm that was hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump); and James Comey, who served as director of the FBI under President Obama.
All of them played key roles in the Russian collusion hoax, wrote Baldwin.
Their motivation? Answered Baldwin: “Many believe the main reason why the political establishment detests Trump and wants to remove him from office is because he’s the first president in history to expose this corruption.”
If Trump is elected to a second term, and if he has the right people in key positions — such as perhaps John Ratcliffe, who takes his oath of office Tuesday for the position temporarily held by Grenell — then he has a very good chance of doing just that.
Photo of President Trump: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
