ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz is extremely excited for the Biden White House.
It is going to be a long four years.
President-elect Joe Biden bragged Tuesday that in choosing Avril Haines to be his director of national intelligence, he “picked a professional” and not a “politician or a political figure.”
For the record, Haines served in the Obama administration as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in case you were wondering whether we are playing fast and loose with the term “political figure.”
Later, after Biden’s announcement in which he unveiled his top picks for his foreign policy and national security teams, Raddatz gushed that Biden’s nominees are not “political.”
The Democratic president-elect has so far nominated a number of Obama White House alumni, including 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, to serve in his administration.
“This is about the least flashy team you could possibly get,” said Raddatz.
She continued, saying, “They are deeply experienced, they are humble, and they are lifelong public servants. When I look at that group up there, and let’s put John Kerry aside because, as we know, he was the Democratic nominee for president once, but they are not political. They are just career people. They have worked together for many years.”
The ABC journalist then singled out national security adviser nominee Jack Sullivan, an Obama alum, who she boasted was “at the side of Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state all the time.”
“And, as they say,” Raddatz added, Biden’s nominees “really do reflect America.”
She continued, indulging in an absurd, maudlin anecdote about an elderly female CIA employee who allegedly went up to Haines and “burst into tears,” weepily praising her thus: “This means so much to me, to have a woman, to see someone who looks like me in a position like this.”
Oh, please.
George Stephanopoulos interrupted at that point to claim that the intelligence community has been “under siege” for the last four years.
“[Haines] made very clear that she will speak truth to power,” Raddatz beamed like a parent watching her child take its first steps.
They know they are talking about the CIA, right?
Over at NBC News, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell had similar commentary.
“The intelligence community,” she said, “which was discredited on day one by President Trump … They are being told [by Haines] it is not going to be political.”
Mitchell added, “And Joe Biden is saying, ‘These are people, this is a team, this team will tell me what I need to know, not what I want to know.’ That is a big change.”
For the record, Trump’s Cabinet has included several overtly nonpolitical people plucked either from the U.S. military or the private sector and dropped directly into Cabinet-level positions. This includes Steven Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and John Kelly.
Neither Mitchell, who defended Biden’s election-year romance with anti-vaxxer rhetoric, nor Raddatz, who floated the conspiracy theory last week that Trump is quietly preparing a mass military operation or the deployment of federal troops around the country, praised those nonpolitical appointments with the same fervor and joy they used Tuesday while discussing Biden’s incoming administration.
