Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) gave a remarkably blunt assessment of the intra-party chaos sparked by President Donald Trump’s “bombshell” he dropped early Wednesday morning - that he would be “cancelling” a scheduled Senate confirmation hearing – and shrugged his shoulders when asked to speculate on Trump’s reasoning.
At around 4 a.m. Washington time, Trump claimed that he was “cancelling” the Senate confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, whom he tapped to become the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after his initial pick faced considerable bipartisan backlash. He appeared to walk that back, however, after announcing that his initial pick – Bill Pulte – would remain as the acting DNI for the foreseeable future, and in the process, derailed the Senate GOP’s agenda.
“The president is aggressively unpredictable. We thought we had things worked out – we don’t,” Kennedy said Wednesday during an appearance on Fox News.
“He’s got two speeds: zero and a thousand miles an hour, and the president’s upset. He wants Bill Pulte in there, the Congress has pushed back, [but] he wants Pulte and we’re going to have to deal with it. It is what it is.”
Trump’s announcement Wednesday morning also included a demand that the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – a law that permits national intelligence agencies to surveil Americans in some cases – be attached to his SAVE Act, his controversial voter ID bill that risks tanking FISA’s renewal entirely.