Another former member of the Trump administration is raising a warning ahead of the election, which seems to be aimed at his former boss. Dan Coats, the former Director of National Intelligence, serving from March 2017 through August 2019. The Trump appointee is out today with an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, “What’s at Stake in This Election? The American Democratic Experiment.” In it, the Republican writes:
Our democracy’s enemies, foreign and domestic, want us to concede in advance that our voting systems are faulty or fraudulent; that sinister conspiracies have distorted the political will of the people; that our public discourse has been perverted by the news media and social networks riddled with prejudice, lies and ill will; that judicial institutions, law enforcement and even national security have been twisted, misused and misdirected to create anxiety and conflict, not justice and social peace.
He goes on to say:
If those are the results of this tumultuous election year, we are lost, no matter which candidate wins.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot writes:
Sure sounds like ex-DNI Dan Coats is calling out his former boss, President Trump, albeit not by name. Not normal for such a high level appointee to call out the president he served as a threat to democracy. This is a klaxon sounding in the night.
In anticipation of the issues he warns about, Coats is calling on Congress to “create a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election.” This is something top Democrats proposed to the Senate on Wednesday as well.