Trump loyalist once called an 'idiot' by ex-CIA director to helm that same agency

Former President Donald Trump has selected John Ratcliffe to be director of the CIA in his new administration, reported RealClearPolitics' Philip Melanchthon Wegmann on Tuesday evening.

Ratcliffe, a controversial loyalist, previously served as Director of National Intelligence in the original Trump administration.

In the announcement, Trump specifically fingered Ratcliffe toeing the GOP line on the Hunter Biden laptop story as the reason he got the job.

“When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People," he said.

The laptop, which was discovered in a repair shop in Maryland and reportedly had some of its contents relayed to Trump ally Rudy Giuliani during the 2020 election cycle, was a key focal point of Republican investigations for years, as they claimed it had emails on it that tied President Joe Biden to his son's potentially improper international business dealings. While some emails were authenticated, no convincing evidence has emerged that Joe Biden committed any legal wrongdoing.

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Republicans were particularly outraged that intelligence officials originally suspected the laptop's contents were edited or manipulated by foreign actors to interfere in the election, which led some social media sites to suppress news about it in 2020. This later turned out not to be the case.

In 2020, Michael Hayden, a retired U.S. Air Force general and former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, was appalled by Ratcliffe's statements defending the laptop's authenticity.

"This idiot is abusing his office by politicizing it," tweeted Hayden, who was deputy director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush. "The head of the intelligence community should be hands off on politics. This is reprehensible!"

Ratcliffe's selection for CIA comes as many other loyalists close to Trump were reportedly vying for that role, including his former National Security Council figure Kash Patel and his former Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, raising alarm bells among intelligence experts fearful that having an unqualified person in the role would degrade America's intelligence capabilities.

This also comes as former CIA Director John Brennan fears Trump's various appointees could alienate foreign leaders — harming the intelligence community's ability to gather information.