Donald Trump never loses the ability to astonish. Many people will have breathed a sigh of relief last month when the United States Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, announced that she was stepping down at the end of June. The former Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii’s 2nd district had tacked dramatically to the right after a dismal but controversial bid for the party’s presidential nomination and threw in her lot with Donald Trump. The reward was to be nominated to his cabinet in November 2024.
The post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was established by George W. Bush in 2005 to be the executive head of the US intelligence community, a collection of 18 organisations, including the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency. The DNI is also the principal adviser on intelligence matters to the President, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and oversees the production of the President’s daily brief.
What Trump demands, and what seems to satisfy him on a primal level, is loyalty
Gabbard was a controversial nominee. Trump cited her military record – she enlisted in the National Guard and is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, having served in the Military Police and civil affairs, but had no specific intelligence or national security experience. She did, however, seemingly have a tendency to absorb and amplify the narratives peddled by dictators and autocrats: she championed cooperation with China, visited Syria and met then-President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine she also talked about ‘Russia’s legitimate security concerns’ and repeated false Kremlin talking points.
More than 100 former senior national security officials signed an open letter to the Senate leadership opposing Gabbard’s appointment as DNI, but she was nevertheless eventually confirmed 52-48. Her departure, therefore, will not be much mourned beyond the Maga movement. Aaron Lukas, the Principal Deputy DNI appointed to replace her on an acting basis, has served in the CIA and on the National Security Council staff but is now also being replaced.
Here Trump has excelled even his own high standards of dark absurdity. The new acting DNI is Bill Pulte, the 38-year-old Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the secondary mortgage markets, enforces affordable housing goals and oversees risk-sharing initiatives. Pulte worked in private equity and served on the board of his family’s multi-billion-dollar construction company, PulteGroup. In 2024, he donated large amounts of money to President Trump’s election campaign and to the Republican National Committee.
Pulte has no experience in intelligence, national security, defence or international affairs at all. Unveiling his appointee, Trump praised his ‘deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets’ – meaningless verbiage. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, Pulte can serve in an acting capacity for up to 210 days.
Whatever Trump may say, it is impossible to argue that Pulte is qualified by experience or training to be Director of National Intelligence (he has a degree in broadcast journalism). He shares with many other senior figures in the administration a devoted, almost slavish personal loyalty to Trump and has the added advantage of having vigorously pursued a range of allegations of financial irregularity against the President’s political enemies.
Pulte represents something more than a pliant, obedient and vengeful candidate, however. It is now hard to avoid the conclusion that Trump is systematically hollowing out the intelligence agencies by removing anyone with independence of thought, as well as appointing low-grade trusties who will do his bidding. In April last year, General Timothy Haugh, director of the National Security Agency, and the deputy director, Wendy Noble, were removed from their posts, while Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was dismissed last August.
With the other hand, Trump appointed Kash Patel, a former board member of Trump Media and Technology Group who has promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots, as director of the FBI. To head the CIA, he chose John Ratcliffe, briefly DNI between 2020 and 2021 and confirmed 49-44, who restricted intelligence briefings to Congress and selectively declassified material to benefit Trump.
Robust and reliable intelligence comes from agencies which are run professionally and have the confidence to deliver independent, unvarnished assessments to political decision-makers. Trump does not want that. First, he is obsessed with the notion of the ‘deep state’, a network of government departments and agencies he believes consistently acts to thwart him in carrying out the will of the American people.
He also has no need for advice or briefing. He makes decisions instinctively, reflexively and often inconsistently, frequently through social media and sometimes in breach of his constitutional authority. President Trump has his own narrative, his own ‘weave’, of world events, from the conflict against Iraq to negotiations with President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.
As in almost every aspect of his administration, the President does not want or require professionalism, competence or experience. What he demands, and what seems to satisfy him on a primal level, is loyalty: not just the loyalty of public officials to the state, but a more profound, personal and one-way fealty to him. The new acting Director of National Intelligence may not know his asset from his agent, but he is a Trump man. That is what was needed; that is why he is there.
