Kirschner sounded the alarm in an AM Joy discussion today that began with host Joy Reid confirming that the firing of previous acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, was because one of his deputies briefed Congress that Russia favors Trump in the 2020 election. Reid cited a tweet from Vox national security reporter Alex Ward saying that a “senior White House official” told him that was "absolutely" the case and that anyone opposing Trump will get fired.
The flip side, Reid noted is that “blind, naked loyalty to Donald Trump,” not expertise, is the only job requirement.
But it’s even worse than that. Kirschner laid out how Trump is destroying the government for the sake of it.
We see what he’s doing, right? He’s dismantling the government brick by brick, agency by agency. And we have a State Department that is really decimated. We have a Department of Justice that is demoralized. We have now an intelligence committee being headed up by, or at least coordinating efforts by, somebody who has no qualifications to be in the job.
We see what the president’s doing. He’s destroying the government for the sake of destroying the government. And he doesn't have any ideological principles he's governed by. He's really just trying to tear things down, as Steve Bannon would say, deconstruct the administrative state. And you know, there's a handful of Republicans in the Congress that can hold him accountable and that can turn this tide and that can actually start to work in favor of election security, in favor of the security of our nation and the American people. And for goodness sakes, they need to stand up and start doing their job and taking their oath seriously.
But will those Republicans stand up and will they be enough? Reid could only name two candidates: Sen. Mitt Romney as having “some desire to do something other than simply take the knee” and Rep. Justin Amash who’s no longer a Republican.
