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Is It Journalists’ Job to Vet Political Nominees?
Not exactly, no, it isn’t
As we ring in 2024, I want to do a look-back on an incident several years ago during the Trump administration.
Trump Nominated John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence
On July 24, 2019, when special counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Ratcliffe pummeled him with questions about whether his investigation was based on politicized anti-Trump sources. Trump saw Ratcliffe on TV and was thrilled with the performance.
Yes, Trump called Zelenskyy the next day
The first important thing Trump did, the very next day, was to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and threaten to withhold $400 million of congressionally approved military aid if Zelenskyy did not help Trump discredit his rival Joe Biden. Trump would later be impeached for doing this. We know all this now.
But I digress.
I mean to focus on what happened with Ratcliffe’s nomination, as I did when I wrote the first draft of this essay on another blog a few years ago.
