Insulating the President with Loyalists || June 3, 2026
It looks like we have a new acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte. You may know his name as he's both a housing executive and the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
So, we've got a new Director with at least two full-time jobs and no meaningful experience in intelligence...yeah, that sounds about par for the Trump Administration's nominations. But at least Gabbard is out of the office.
Anyways, this move will likely result in the intelligence agencies losing influence in presidential decision-making and reinforces the trend of Trump isolating himself from anyone smarter than him.
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Comments (50)
I don't believe President Trump rejects knowledge in order to make sound judgments; he wants as much information as he can get. I understand your concerns about firing the bureaucracy based on seniority. But more likely than not, those people will not give him the correct information. So, they have run their course. It's time for them to go. The people will have the information or know where to get it.
Get out of your own echo chamber
Pay attention Peter. This is a temporary position. They are interviewing 5 candidates for the DNI. Pulte is extremely brilliant and his job is to reduce the size of DNI, as it is not needed.
and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse...
FFOTUS cares only about himself and he’ll let America and Americans burn as long as he make a buck. Sovereign fiat currency remains the People’s power. Embrace that fact and create prosperity for all citizens plus strengthen our democracy. Act! Slava Ukraini!
your channel is an a go chamber too. All i see in here is Trumpy bad.
Agree with Hank O'Donnell and Freebeard's comments Warren is qualified, well spoken, always has her facts in place, in the good section of congress
News reports are that even some Republicans are pushing back on this guys appointment. Seems our leader thinks it more important to have an MMA fight on the Whitehouse lawn than deal with national security.
Peter, love you and the updates. To say a CEO of a company like Pulte has no project management experience does nothing to strengthen you as a thought leader or your argument. Still love you.
How do we know he doesn’t have ties like a certain someone, with “real estate” come laundering oligarchs from Russia?
I general agree with the idea of avoiding unnecessary foreign wars, but there was always something that creeped me out about TG. Something is wrong there. She screams Manchurian Candidate. Besides, anyone who would voluntarily choose to serve in a Trump administration after J6 is just a morally bankrupt opportunist who I have no respect for. Especially switching parties to do so. She must have been very desperate to get close to power (creepy) or she was ordered to do so (creepier). Buh-bye TG.
I'm afraid that Bill Pulte's new job is to simply focus on Trump's "enemies from within". After all, we have nothing to worry ab out from any foreign actors like Russia, China, or Iran, right?
Got what you wished for, eh???? You despise Tulsi Gabbard, who is an actual patriot he served not only in the military been in Congress before taking on this role. And you incessantly criticize her for being affiliated with "foreign interest". So what the hell do you call the way that we are married to Israel right now? Funny I don't hear you speaking out about that very often at all. I'm laughing my tits off. You got what you prayed for and it's worse! Enjoy!
Too bad you didn’t get the job Peter. Maybe in another administration.
"Beholden"? Again, you imply that TG is somehow in Putin's pocket rather than honestly following her own set of values related to national security. Since when is avoiding foreign entanglements treasonous? In fact, since when is avoiding foreign entanglements bad policy?
Gabbard's policies support my evaluation of her as a realistic non-interventionist, US nationalistic, restrained realistic policy holder. Why is this bad?
Builders know about carpet. This might help when calibrating the carpet bombing coming soon to Iran.
Throw-away comments like that about Obama and Warren are not helpful, unless PZ feels the need to throw the MAGA folks a bone. Heated discussion between Obama and his advisors are well documented, so giving the impression that he simply isolated himself and decided on everything without external input is silly. Not saying that everything he did was great, but to suggesting that Obama's MO is in any way comparable with Trumps is ridiculous.
Don't diss on Elizabeth Warren, she is exposing the blatant ongoing corruption in Washington DC especially with this administration.
What a great early 90s hotel "ballroom" backdrop. The irony that Bush 41 was in office at the time of that carpets' installation is not lost on me...
It seems people can't understand, the prez doesn't stand alone. Tacitly, congress is with him. 70 million voted for him. America didn't change. You had wrong ideas about what America was and is.
I guess the janitor wasn't available.
Please do a piece regarding Obama building his own echo chamber (from reality). Trump is not the first POTUS to do this.
Which is why decisions of war should be debated first in Congress before we go. The executive is always surrounded by Yes-Men who can not tell him "F'K NO!". It takes a co-equal branch to hold back a mad king. Issue like not believing the Iranians would close the Strait should have been vigorously debated and if a better answer couldn't have been given, then they shut it down. The Founders did not want the decision for war to be in the hands of one single man. That goes against the entire concept of our government to divide power and create checks and balances to protect against a single persons misjudgment or malicious ambition. "Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety." -Proverbs 11:14
Unbelieveable and more so that Republicans would want this for America.
Read the transcript. Amusing that Peter thinks Obama's preference for solitude, deep introspection, and a deliberate desire to limit the crowd during critical decision-making is in any way comparable to Trump's. Obama was known for stepping outside the inner circle to seek alternative perspectives - again, the opposite of Trump.
...and I think he actually read his briefings.
I misread the title as "Insulting the president with loyalists" Lol. No idea what that might mean, but I was sure curious to find out!
Nothing good comes out of this administration. 152 days until the democrats sweep the house and senate and a leash is finally put on Orange Man.
What makes you think (1) trump won't do whatever he can to sabotage the election or deny the legitimacy of the results and (2) he'll seat Dems in January? Worst case, I know.
When running low on intelligence, do we need a Director of National Intelligence?
Hi Peter! I’m here in Vegas! Wish I knew you’d be here, lol.
I hate Vegas
The most important question for Americans in general, and the Democrats in particular, is how have you allowed the situation to arise where someone as corrupt and incompetent as Trump can be elected President, twice? A happy, healthy country just doesn't do that to itself. America really needs to look long and hard at itself in the mirror and work towards setting itself right again. As the most consequential country on Earth, it really matters, for all of us, no matter where we live.
We have continually allowed ourselves to be led around by our noses through hot button wedge issues while a sneaky class of mostly Republican politicians pick our pockets. I'm afraid that politicians still have not underestimated the general public in the US. When I was in high school, most students did not care about understanding issues and I went to a reasonable middle class rural high school. If 15% of the US population is educated enough to make an informed vote, that would seem about right to me. To be elite in this country is just to not be completely unaware of the nuances of war, economics, technology and medicine. We are at a stage in societal development where the masses don't feel impelled to work hard at understanding their civic responsibilities in keeping a liberal democracy. This means we have further to fall still.
May be Elizabeth Warren "hates everyone" because everyone in this administration is worthy of contempt.
She hated everyone long before this administration, didn’t she have beef with Bernie???
i wonder what peter thinks about the podcast sphere bro's
On the devil's advocate side: I do think there's evidence of a deep state bureaucracy generating and acting on its own agenda regardless of "meddling" by elected officials. Frankly, as Biden faded, some of the decisions that allegedly came from him just did not seem like him at all. I am speaking of excesses at the border, some of the Ukraine initiatives, trans rights issues, etc. In short, there very well may be a power struggle, if not outright war, between federal elected representatives and the entrenched civil service bureaucracy. Just sayin'.
Biden was consistent on both trans rights and ukraine and the border throughout
Low blow about Elizabeth Warren. Takes away from your credibility.
💯
So, to paraphrase Mark Twain: If you listen to Bill Pulte, you’re uninformed. If you listen to Tulsi Gabbard, you’re misinformed. Well, at least Putin’s instructions will take slightly longer to get to the top, now. Slightly…
Well, yeah. But, is replacing an official of suspect loyalty with a incompetent political hack what WE really want. I am thinking: nope.
What about Saint Petersburg presently getting pulverised? No Big deal?
Awesome!
Concentrating the power of multiple parts of the government is a great idea, though, right? Like don’t we just need “A guy who does gun stuff,” “A guy who takes bribes,” and “A guy who taxes the poor?” I thought that’s how all good autocracies worked?
Welcome back to The States.
I’ll take incompetence over outright malicious.
Whoa. Give the guy a chance! He can certainly learn to be malicious too!