He's Back

The ghost of William Henry Harrison strikes back. As readers probably know, Harrison had the shortest presidency, running from March 4, 1841, to April 4, 1841. Schoolchildren are taught that Harrison died from pneumonia brought on by a 2-hour inaugural speech given outdoors in freezing weather and heavy wind. Modern historians believe that Harrison died of enteric fever, due to infected drinking water from a sewage dump just seven blocks upstream from the White House. See? Even then, D.C. was a swamp. Donald Trump, no student of history, isn't taking any chances. With freezing weather and heavy winds expected in D.C. today, he moved his inauguration indoors to the Rotunda of the Capitol.

This sudden change is causing massive problems, as the 220,000 people with inauguration tickets will not fit in the Rotunda. Ronald Reagan's second inauguration was held there. The Rotunda can hold 700 people—if they are squished together like herring in a barrel, as they were for Reagan's second inauguration:

This means that if the 535 members of Congress, the Supreme Court Justices, the new cabinet(-level) nominees, half a dozen tech billionaires, and the Republican megadonors are allowed in, maybe 100 other people will be invited, at most. Congressional spouses probably won't make the cut, except for the (Republican) leadership. If Melania wants to come (probably not), she can probably make the guest list. About 20,000 ticket holders will be allowed into the (indoor) Capital One Arena (used for hockey and basketball) to watch the inauguration live on the giant video screens, but that still leaves 200,000 ticket holders out in the cold. Literally. Just the logistics of picking the lucky 20,000 and telling them they have a golden ticket and where to go could be daunting. Or maybe it will be first-come, first-served, and the first 20,000 people willing to spend the night standing in line in freezing weather will get in. That would be a good way to separate the sheeple from the goats. The Inauguration Committee urged all the others to watch at "indoor venues of their choice" (English translation: Go find a bar somewhere and watch it on TV there). Tough luck. For a middle-sized Trump donor or the honored guest of a Republican senator, that is kind of a bummer.

The Washington Post interviewed Trump supporters who had tickets and who had come from as far away as Colorado to be there when their hero was inaugurated again. All of them were sad that they wouldn't get to see it live, but for the most part, they understood that Trump's health came first. One plus for Trump about the inauguration is that he won't have to deal with reports that the crowd was much smaller than last time. No one knows for sure how big the crowd would have been, but D.C. hotels are at only 70% of capacity vs. 95% in 2017, so probably fewer people came to watch than last time. And far fewer than Obama 2008 or 2012, of course.

In any event, at noon today, Donald Trump will once again become president and he is expected to waste no time getting going on his main issue: deporting undocumented immigrants. He is expected to sign a slew of executive orders this afternoon and then launch raids in "sanctuary cities" later this week. He will keep going until his hand gets too tired to sign anymore. Many of these XOs will undo XOs Joe Biden issued. That's the problem with XOs. One president can make a rule with his pen but the next president can erase it with his pen. For example, Trump will end "catch and release," which allows people arrested for immigration violations to remain in the country until their trials. He wants them removed immediately. Trump also said he plans to "take the handcuffs off Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials."

One thing he will do quickly, probably within a few days, is declare a national emergency, which will give him additional powers and resources to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants. That is probably legal since the law gives the president the power to declare emergencies. What is far less likely to be legal is an XO that will deny U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. The Fourteenth Amendment states that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, except for the children of certain foreign diplomats and Native Americans living on reservations, which were not considered U.S. soil in 1868. If Trump signs such an XO, eventually the Supreme Court is going to have to decide this, but there is nothing in the Amendment that excludes the children of undocumented immigrants.

Another action Trump might take today is to pardon the 1,500 people convicted of participating in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. If he pardons all of them, that will ignite a firestorm. Pardoning someone who entered the Capitol through a broken window is one thing. Pardoning someone who assaulted a police officer is something else. Police officers might have some reaction to that.

Trump will also likely direct all government officials to remove all DEI programs from their agencies and ban transgender people from serving in the military. He has said that he will sign an XO stating that there are exactly two genders: male and female. He has not said how he will determine which is which, though. If he leaves that to the agencies, different ones may come up with different definitions. Some may go with chromosomes, some with birth certificates, some with current (or previous) genitalia, and some with asking people which they are. It could be chaos if there is no national standard answer to the question: What is a woman, actually?

Blue-state attorneys general are expecting a blitz of XOs and are prepared to sue the federal government over them. Trump's team knows this and is preparing to respond. Trump doesn't care much about the law and may well hope that the initial deportation cases, which will likely be the first to make their way to court, hit Trump-appointed judges who will not stay deportations until the cases are heard. A much bigger problem is the logistics. First, large-scale deportations are going to cost billions of dollars. Congress hasn't appropriated that money yet. It could be included in the giant budget reconciliation bill Trump wants, but that could take weeks or months to put together and pass (and see below for more).

Second, where will the deportees go? Mexico may take the people who are Mexican citizens, but what about the deportees from Central America, the Caribbean, South America and Africa? Will those countries welcome back their citizens? Many of the undocumented immigrants are indeed undocumented—that is, they have no documents, like passports, showing where they are from. Then what? Where do they go, and what if the country they are supposedly from does not accept them?

One side note is that in addition to being Inauguration Day, today is the day Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is celebrated (even though King was born on Jan. 15, 1929). This coincidence is fairly rare, having occurred only twice before, in 1997 (Bill Clinton's second inauguration) and 2013 (Barack Obama's second inauguration). Both of those presidents greatly respected King. In fact, Obama pointedly used a Bible that once belonged to King to take the oath of office. Today's inauguree (?) certainly does not respect King and has used bigoted language for years.

King's oldest son, Martin Luther King III, said: "The King holiday is a moment to renew and ask ourselves whether we've achieved the dream my parents envisioned. The truth is, we have not. But every January offers a chance to begin again." America is a work in progress, but some people want to go backwards, not forwards. (V)

TikTok Went Dark for a Day

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the law saying that TikTok had to cease operations before Jan. 19 unless its U.S. operations were sold to a U.S. company was constitutional. At 9 p.m. EST on Friday, TikTok went dark. The company replaced the app with this screen:

The app was also removed from both Apple's and Google's app stores. The law states that the president may extend the deadline one time for 90 days if TikTok can show it has made progress in selling the app. What Congress meant is that if there are serious negotiations between TikTok and one or more potential U.S. buyers and they are haggling over the price, the president can give them 90 days to complete the deal. As far as we know, there are no such negotiations in progress, although Walmart, Microsoft, Oracle and some private consortia have previously expressed interest in buying TikTok's U.S. operations. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has said he will extend the deadline by 90 days to give himself time to discuss the matter with TikTok and the leaders of Congress, who passed the law by a large bipartisan majority and would not be happy if he just ignored Congress and the Supreme Court and did nothing. After Trump made this announcement, TikTok went back on the air yesterday. Trump's extension today without any path to a sale is probably illegal, but of all the laws he plans to break, this one is probably the least significant.

Trump has a lot of things on his plate on Day 1 and TikTok is not a high priority. Invoking the 90-day extension was easy. The hard part comes later. When making an actual decision what to do with the app, Trump must take into account the following factors:

• The wishes of the 170 million Americans who use the app.
• The financial interests of the creators and influencers who earn their livings using the app.
• The interests of the Americans who invested in the app.
• The national security interests of the United States.
• The concerns of China hawks in Congress (not to mention those of future Secretary of State Marco Rubio).

All of these can be dealt with by simply forcing the Chinese company that owns the app, ByteDance, to sell it to an American company or group of American investors. ByteDance won't like this, but if Trump tells them that if they don't it will be banned forever, they will sell it, especially since one consortium has already bid $20 billion for it, without the algorithm that shovels content to users. If ByteDance held an auction, it could probably get more. Surely that is better than just killing it off and getting nothing. Then again, maybe Elon Musk could come to the rescue. Bidding $25 billion would be cheap compared to the $44 billion he paid for eX-Twitter. Then he would own a large part of the social media space and could use it to promote Trump and make it hard for Trump to dump him, no matter how hard Steve Bannon tries.

Even if Trump forces ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to some U.S. company, preferably one that does not raise antitrust concerns, he has other problems to deal with. For one thing, once the ban became imminent, users began to flock to alternative sites—and not U.S.-based ones like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, for some reason. Instead they are moving to Lemon8 and RedNote, both of which are also owned by Chinese companies and would also be forced to divest their U.S. operations under the same law that banned TikTok. Of course, if new AG Pam Bondi announced that, law or no law, she wasn't going to prosecute anyone for violating it, it could be dicey. Would Google's lawyers or Apple's lawyers allow their respective app stores to host apps that were technically in violation of the law because the AG said that she would not prosecute them for doing so? They know very well this could lead to blackmail. If either company ever did anything Trump didn't like, Bondi could change "her" mind and prosecute them. Telling the judge "But she said breaking the law was fine with her" is not going to carry much weight. They are going to want Congress to formally repeal the law, which may not be so easy.

A second problem is that Trump is publicly very anti-China. So is Rubio. Caving to China is going to look weak. Also, caving to China on apps and simultaneously imposing tariffs on China sends a very mixed message, which could anger Congress, freak out the stock market, and upset the base.

Yesterday, Trump floated the idea of having TikTok be run as a joint Chinese-U.S. project. This would certainly be valuable to the U.S. partner, which could make a lot of money from this. Unfortunately, it would do nothing to prevent ByteDance from turning over all the data on Americans to the Chinese government. But it would provide an opportunity for a company Trump wants to reward to make a lot of money. Leave it to Trump to take a national security problem, not solve the national security problem, and then turn it into a money-making opportunity for some billionaire he likes. Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle, is a long-time Trump supporter and Oracle certainly has the technical know-how to run TikTok, so Trump might decide that allowing Oracle to buy half of the U.S. part of TikTok is a great solution. Remember, Trump hates China, but when there is money to be made for himself or a strong supporter, everything else is forgotten. It works for Vladimir Putin and his team of oligarchs, so why not in America?

As an aside, as you may have seen, there is a lot of speculation about who gave Rudy Giuliani enough money to make a deal with the two Georgia election workers he defamed. Since they could have gotten two condos and some other paraphernalia worth around $12 million in all by just staying the course, the offer to them probably had to be a bit more, say in the $15-20 million ballpark. It is at least conceivable that the CEO of TikTok, looking for a way to make Trump happy, might have decided that "loaning" Giuliani $20M and agreeing in writing to forgive the loan if he didn't flip on Trump in his Arizona or Georgia criminal cases, was easily worth a large multiple of $20M. Ungrateful as he is, Trump might still have appreciated a small gesture like that. We'll probably never know because we presume that whoever the sugar daddy was, they created a shell company to pass the money directly to Giuliani, so the two women would not know where it came from. All they would see is that it came from Giuliani's personal bank account. Maybe even Giuliani would be kept in the dark about the true source of the money to make sure he didn't spill the beans by accident. Needless to say, this is just wild speculation. (V)

This Is Rich

Washington D.C. has traditionally been a place where power was more important than money. Donald Trump is changing that. He has nominated an unprecedented 13 billionaires to the cabinet and other very high government jobs. He is indeed a man of the (very rich) people. The combined assets of these billionaires exceeds $460 billion (in large part due to Elon Musk's $400 billion, but the rest aren't exactly paupers). In contrast, Joe Biden's cabinet had a combined net worth of $118 million. If the staff mathematician's old-fashioned calculator is working correctly, the Trump cabinet is worth about 3900x the Biden cabinet. Even if we exclude Musk, since he distorts the result so much, the remaining Trump cabinet members combined are at least 500x richer than the combined Biden cabinet members.

Some people will see this as the Gilded Age, Part II, but it is not. John D. Rockefeller never moved into William McKinley's White House, nor was he anything vaguely equivalent to a co-president. He was just a rich businessman.

One effect of having a cabinet this wealthy is that it is putting pressure on (part of) the D.C. real estate market. With billionaire after billionaire bidding for the biggest castles in the choicest and most protected areas, the upscale housing market is exploding. Some real estate agents have taken to cold calling people who own very fancy houses that even a billionaire might like and asking if they would be open to an incredible offer they couldn't refuse. Presumably every time someone said yes, the agent would contact the billionaires and tell them the property was available for the right bid and might they be interested? And the right bid might not be so much. D.C. housing is cheap compared to New York or Southampton, where a really, really nice house might go for $100 million. In D.C. you couldn't spend even a paltry $25 million on a house if you tried. The top neighborhoods are Kalorama, Massachusetts Avenue Heights, and Georgetown. (V)

Trump Made $27 Billion on Saturday

Let's continue with the theme of money. One of Donald Trump's great interests is scamming his own supporters. Whether it is gold sneakers or made-in-China Bibles, if there is money in it for him, he's game. His first venture into the world of intangibles was the $99 Trump Digital Trading Cards. That didn't go big time.

Next up was the DJT stock, but that is slightly different. It is a normal stock and buying a share gives you the rights of any shareholder. Most financial experts think the company is grossly overvalued at $40.03/share, but at least theoretically, it could eventually turn into Trump TV or another potentially profitable enterprise. It could also buy some actual right-wing media company, like NewsMax or Breitbart, and make it profitable.

The ultimate scam is a crypto coin. It has no intrinsic value, but people buy it under the "greater fool theory." As long as people think that there are other people willing to pay more for a coin than they did, it keeps going up. Until it doesn't. The classic example is the 17th century Dutch tulip mania, in which greedy people paid more for a single tulip bulb than a skilled workman could earn in a year. Until the market suddenly collapsed.

Trump decided that there was money to be made in crypto (even though he once called it a "scam"), so he launched a crypto coin, $TRUMP, late Friday. By Saturday afternoon, its fully diluted value (the value it would have if all the coins not yet released were out there) was $27 billion. Not bad for a day's work (or nonwork, since obviously Trump knows nothing about crypto, blockchain, servers, etc.). A new Trump-owned company, CIC Digital LLC, owns 80% of the coins, but converting the coins into dollars won't be so easy because as soon as he starts to sell, people will lose faith and the bottom will drop out. At the very least, he has to wait a couple of years and sell them quietly and gradually.

Trump's suddenly multiplying his (paper) wealth by 5x or 10x, depending on whether you count the DJT stock as actual money, has real policy implications. In particular, his pick for chairman of the SEC is Paul Atkins. It is known that Atkins' top priority is making sure corporations' only goal is maximizing shareholder value. To him, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) concerns are a distraction that CEOs must ignore. But the SEC can also play a role in the crypto world, by letting banks, mutual funds, and other companies sell coins or crypto funds or ETFs to the public, buy them for their own accounts, and more. Banks, for example, have to meet various financial stress tests. Do crypto coins count as assets? It is very much in Trump's personal interest that coins are treated as valuable as stocks. Except that stocks rarely go from $27 billion to $0 billion in 20 minutes, something potentially possible with a crypto coin. In other words, the new SEC chairman could treat an incredibly volatile asset as a solid asset, putting a lot of people at risk. That is not the SEC's job. In fact, its job is the exact opposite: Making markets function properly so investors are clearly aware of the risks they are taking.

Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said: "It is absolutely wild. After decades of seeing presidents-elect spend the time leading up to inauguration separating themselves from their finances to show that they don't have any conflicts of interest, we now have a president-elect who, the weekend before inauguration, is launching new businesses along with promises to deregulate... those sectors in a way to just blatantly profit off his own presidency." Even Anthony Scaramucci, now a crypto evangelist but previously Trump's communications director for 1.00 Scaramuccis, said: "Don't delude yourself. It's Idi Amin-level corruption," referring to the notoriously corrupt former Ugandan dictator. When the Mooch, whose job is to promote crypto, thinks $TRUMP is bad for an industry with an already sketchy basis, that says something.

Oh, and Melania is clearly already thinking about her post-presidency life. She just issued her own crypto coin, $MELANIA. Now people can buy a matched set. How romantic! (V)

Math Strikes Back

The line that sold Republicans on the 2017 tax cuts was: "The cuts pay for themselves." Now there is abundant evidence that such is not the case. Instead, the national debt went from $20 trillion to $36 trillion and is growing faster than the economy. Donald Trump may not know this, but some of the deficit hawks in the House know it and don't like it. They are unlikely to be fooled again. Not even with fuzzy math.

A number of deficit hawks, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), have said they want the new tax law to be revenue neutral and not add to the deficit. Given that it will take only one Republican House member to kill any bill until the three (soon-to-be) vacant seats are filled in April, the hawks have to be placated—and not by magical "dynamic scoring" that assumes tax cuts will stimulate so much growth that revenues will increase. They know it didn't happen last time and are not going to fall for it again. They are going to demand actual cuts in spending, which will pit Republican against Republican in deciding where the cuts should be.

One of the reasons it will be harder to claim that tax cuts will bring in more revenue is that the 2017 corporate tax cuts were the ones that stimulated the economy the most, and they aren't the ones expiring. Dynamic scoring doesn't work for individuals. Giving Elon Musk another $100 billion isn't going to cause economic growth. If he sees a new business opportunity, he can invest in it with his current money. He isn't refraining from making an investment because he lacks the funds. If he is refraining from investing, it is because he doesn't see a good investment out there and a tax cut won't change that.

Some Republicans see the problem and are working the refs. They are calling the Congressional Budget Office names and saying you can't trust any number they produce.

Another problem is that Donald Trump wants immigration and taxes in one bill. Then the combined effect will have to be scored. Deporting a million people will reduce the workforce, as most of those people are employed. The companies they work for will have to shrink due to fewer workers. They will then be less profitable and thus will pay less in taxes. Lower tax revenues without cutting spending means a bigger deficit. If immigration and tax cuts are rolled into one big package, the CBO has to consider the effect of the whole package. If there is a tax bill first, then no one has to take into account a future immigration bill and the financial picture will look rosier. But Trump is adamantly against first a tax bill then an immigration bill because it will tell his supporters what he really cares about is lower taxes, not deporting immigrants. He absolutely does not want to send that message to them. (V)

Reconciliation May Not Go Smoothly

In order to pass a budget without the Democrats filibustering it to death, Republicans will have to use the budget reconciliation process. This is a complicated, multistep process that requires considerable expertise and also a detailed knowledge of what the Senate parliamentarian will accept, since non-budget items are not allowed in reconciliation bills. The person who will run the process is the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX).

At the beginning of his speakership, Kevin McCarthy told his colleagues that he had "no confidence" in Arrington. He reiterated that throughout his short speakership. One senior House staff member told NOTUS, off the record: "He is all over the place and doesn't understand what the fu** he's doing." Others have noted that Arrington's special combination of ignorance and arrogance could lead to disaster. In a way, he is the House's answer to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Hmmm, two arrogant, obnoxious Texans. Odd.

One of the pressing issues is whether raising the debt ceiling—and if so, by how much—should be in the reconciliation bill. This is complicated material and affects how much taxes can be cut and how much spending has to be cut. Some members say that Arrington tells different stories to different people. He does tell everyone that he wants dramatic budget cuts, though.

Among the things he wants are huge cuts to Medicaid ($2.3 trillion), Medicare ($479 billion), the ACA ($151 billion) and climate change mitigation ($468 billion). Many of the cuts are not only unpopular, but are in areas where Arrington's committee does not have jurisdiction. The members whose committees do have jurisdiction over those areas don't enjoy being told what they have to do, especially by a member they see as ignorant and arrogant.

One member described Arrington's wish list like the "list a kid would send to Santa when he was 5. I want a pony. I want an airplane. I want a truck." They understand both the difficulty of getting virtually the entire Republican conference behind them and the public reaction when people begin to understand what the cuts mean for them. When they told Arrington this, he proposed raising the corporate income tax, something Trump abhors. When people told the Representative this was a complete nonstarter, he claimed that a staffer put it on his PowerPoint sheet by mistake. A number of members have said he has no idea of what could realistically get through the House, let alone the Senate. It may not be a smooth ride. (V)

Trump's Deportation Plan is ALREADY Working

Donald Trump campaigned on deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. He probably can't distinguish between "millions" and "big number," but Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles knows very well that is impossible. Congress would have to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars, camps would have to be built, there would be dozens of lawsuits, and so on. It would take many years and catch many U.S. citizens in the dragnet, causing the courts to interfere.

In short, Trump doesn't do details. What he is very good at, on the other hand, is instilling fear in people. What he wants—and it is starting to happen already—is for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, or more, of undocumented immigrants to feel real fear and self-deport. That is especially true if they have U.S.-born children and are scared they will be put on a bus headed to Mexico and their kids will be taken from them and put up for adoption. Also, people know that if they self-deport, they can go at a time of their own choosing to a place of their own choosing. If Trump can convince them that he is coming for them and they can't hide (even if that is not true), it makes sense for them to get while the getting is good, and on their own terms.

This could be the genius behind Trump's bluster: Convince people that they are about to be deported so they leave on their own terms, but leave. That is much simpler and cheaper than finding them, shipping them off to holding pens, and then deporting them. It might work.

Of course, merely saying he will round up undocumented immigrants will go only so far. There has to be some action (i.e., photo ops) to back that up to really scare the daylights out of people. The action may start as early as tomorrow. "Border czar" Tom Homan said: "There's gonna be a big raid all across the country." There is no reason to think he is bluffing. The original plan was to start in Chicago tomorrow, but after that bit of information leaked out, he said he was reconsidering his plans.

One thing that XOs can do is instruct federal agencies what to prioritize. It is expected that one of Trump's first XOs will be to reverse a Biden XO instructing ICE to prioritize deporting criminals and recent arrivals. The new XO will authorize (maybe even encourage) ICE to deport any undocumented immigrant the officers can find. And it may instruct them to go look in places known to harbor many of them, especially certain worksites. Raids on workplaces and arrests of dozens or hundreds of people may well put the fear of God (or fear of Trump, which to him is kind of the same thing) in many other undocumented immigrants and make them think seriously about self-deporting on their own terms. (V)

Gabbard's Problems Keep Piling Up

Now that Pete Hegseth has the endorsement of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), he might well be confirmed, even though probably 90% of the Republican senators know very well that would put the country at great risk. That means the most endangered nominee now becomes Tulsi Gabbard, whom Donald Trump picked to be DNI. Not only does she know nothing about national intelligence, but many people, including members of the Senate, think she is at best a "useful idiot" and at worst an actual Russian asset. Last week, nearly 100 former security officials signed a letter urging the Senate to "carefully evaluate" her before voting on her confirmation.

As if that wasn't enough, a couple of new problems have cropped up. For one, her past support for Edward Snowden, who leaked national security information, is becoming an issue. Some people praise Snowden for his bravery, but the DNI is not supposed to encourage people to leak national security information. That's something journalists can do, but not the DNI, whose job is keeping secrets, well, secret.

When Gabbard was in the House as a representative from Hawaii, she introduced a resolution urging that all charges against Snowden be dropped. This did not go over well with members of Congress steeped in intelligence work. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "I don't think Edward Snowden is a patriot by any means. He's a traitor to his own nation." Lankford might just have a few questions for her about this during her confirmation hearing. Gabbard made a feeble attempt to defend Snowden. This resulted in the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes (D-CT) saying: "She's full of sh**." Of course, he doesn't get to vote on her confirmation, but now both Republicans and Democrats on intelligence committees have made it clear what they feel about her, and that could influence the vote.

The other problem: money. Even though Gabbard was elected to the House as a Democrat, she has been functionally a Republican ever since leaving Congress. In fact, she discovered that being a nominal Democrat but espousing Donald Trump's positions made her a valuable commodity in right-wing circles. She quickly sought to monetize her new fame as a MAGA-loving "Democrat." It turns out that she made over $1.2 million last year exploiting her new celebrity. She made $200,000 as a Fox News contributor, $120,000 as a media "consultant" for the right-wing American Center for Law and Justice, and $170,000 from speaking engagements at the Heritage Foundation and similar venues. She also has several businesses that basically sell Tulsi Gabbard. Being a charismatic very-Trumpy "Democrat" definitely has its rewards.

So she is an unprincipled opportunist, in addition to everything else. Might she use her DNI position in a similar way? The DNI is supposed to one of the most secretive people in the government, even more secretive than the CIA director, because the DNI is in charge of all the spy agencies, not just one. Is someone who loves the limelight and freely expresses her opinions on everything the right person to be the country's top spy? It is something that may give at least some senators something to consider. (V)

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