Donald J. Trump has a problem. His current grotesquely unqualified partisan jackass pick for "acting" Director of National Intelligence, tweet-troll Richard Grenell, cannot remain in his "acting" role unless Trump nominates an actual, non-acting DNI by March 11. (This presumes, of course, that the Trump administration does not simply ignore the law based on a new William Barr-led reinterpretation that renders it, like all other oversight-based laws, invalid.)
Trump is therefore going to need a new, Senate-confirmable, grotesquely unqualified partisan jackass for the role. One of the names coming up yet again: vigorous boot-polisher Rep. John Ratcliffe. You may recall that Ratcliffe, who shares his family name with one of the least popular tourist attractions in Europe(*), was nominated for this very same position just a half-year ago, and that his nomination crashed and burned in rather spectacular fashion. Only days after his nomination, press outlets began to report that Ratcliffe appeared to have embellished his resume (lied, that means lied) and claimed national security experience he did not have.
Lying about your own past is one of the biggest red flags possible for anyone reaching for the top rungs of the U.S. intelligence community, and Ratcliffe's bid for the post ended near-immediately. So why is his name still in contention now?
One guess: This is yet another example of a Senate-emboldened Trump that no longer cares about keeping up appearances. Ratcliffe has been a staunch Trump defender, which Trump considers the one and only requirement for any administration post. Whether or not he is unqualified, or a liar, or a trenchcoat-wearing beaver standing on a badger standing on a wolverine is inconsequential so long as he can give Trump that sweet, sweet Fox News praise. Trump may nominate his ally and dare Senate Republicans to rebuff him, since they are now doing his bidding on, evidently, literally everything else.
An equally likely possibility, though, is that Trump's meeting with and "interview" of Ratcliffe is just his way of stringing Ratcliffe along while getting a new dose of Dear Leader praise injected into his hardened arteries. There is no praise like the praise an interviewee can give when they are looking for a new, much-desired position in Dear Leader's upper ranks, and Trump is likely to "interview" as many supplicants as his schedule allows before calling up Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs to get the name he will eventually announce. We do not know. We do not know because the man is flighty at best, and off his rocker the rest of the time, and still seems to have such seething contempt for the U.S. intelligence community in general that he appears to be looking for hires that will do active damage to those agencies.
(*) I do not know this trivia tidbit for certain, but am channelling my inner White House press secretary to deduce it from a dream I think I possibly remember, or maybe do not. That is how these things work now.