calling in the question on election night of 2020 whether it s a fraudulent election and whether he can claim a fraudulent election then he can say i should stay in power until we get this resolved. there are people on the left who have that fear. i see so far no basis for it. there should be no basis of that fear, because we re going to try to not deal in conspiracy theories. trump really believes this. who is left on his national security team to set him straight? dni coats left last week. stacking his cabinet may make the president feel better in the near term. it s not protecting our country. and at this point, it s not just a question of who s willing to tell him things that he doesn t
out to the press and you vet for me. a lot of times you do a very good job. not always. i think the if you look at it, if you take a look at it, the vetting process for the white house is very good. you re part of the process. i give out a name to the press and they vet for me. we save a lot of money that way. president trump says he has a short list of names that he s considering. ea he said he hopes to have an announcement as soon as monday. dni coats said he ll be leaving by august 15th. not a lot of time for the president to choose a successor and an acting director of national intelligence. he s not particularly interested in having sue gordon in the
trump administration. he s also at times been the target of the president s ire. who can forget this moment at a national security conference where coat was caught off guard by the news of a white house visit by vladimir putin. the white house has announced on twitter that vladimir putin is coming to the white house in the fall. say that again. [ laughter ] you vladimir putin did i hear you yeah, yeah. okay. yeah. [ laughter ] that s gonna be special. house speaker nancy pelosi is raising concerns about ratcliffe s nomination saying dan coats was respected on both sides of the aisle and warning that dni coats successor must put patriotism before politics and remember his oath is to protect the constitution and the american people not the president. julie davis is the congressional
trump, there could be complicated conversations that some of the president s allies have to have with him about cummings in particular, but i don t know if any of them will actually dare bring the topic up. let s talk about the other big news coming out of washington over the weekend. dan coats and president trump historically have had a rocky relationship. don coats will be leaving as director of national intelligence. walk us through how we got to this point. how is it that dan coats has had such a bad relationship. the clip you played of andrea mitchell speaking with director coats in aspen was perhaps the most obvious of all of them, but dni coats, former senator coats has been direct to the point in one of the accolades on the hill, particularly among senators from both parties for
right. his analysis was correct. the president was just wrong. right. so, yeah, i think it s not ideal. it s also i mean, it s one thing to have that discussion behind the scenes, it s another thing for a president on a foreign trip in front of john bolton and everyone else, to say, some of my folks believe this. but that s not the first time he said that kind of thing. he said that to vladimir putin about dni coats. you write about the chaos behind the scenes under bolton. he s sort of you know, he s moving to try to keep his influence and spread his influence. now, how does that work? well, i think what s interesting now in the administration is you just you have a big vacuum, basically. so, there isn t a perment sec d permanent secretary of defense. there s no u.n. ambassador. there s no secretary for homeland security. so the whole sort of field when you say it like that, it doesn t sound good. so the whole field of national security is it falls to him.