Trump torpedoes inspector general role … once more

Donald Trump’s venality is on full display for all the world to see and to gasp at the president’s shamelessness.

He fired an inspector general selected by a panel of inspectors general to oversee the spending of coronavirus relief funds appropriated by Congress. Trump, who signed the relief bill into law, then selected an IG of his choosing to do the task.

Do you get where I’m going with this? If not, I shall explain.

The panel of IGs had picked an independent inspector general, Glenn Fine, to serve as a watchdog. Trump wouldn’t stand still for that, so he canned Fine, who serves as the Pentagon’s inspector general, and installed someone from the Environmental Protection Agency to oversee the disbursement of the $2.2 trillion pandemic relief package.

This switch comes in the wake of Donald Trump’s firing of Michael Atkinson, the former intelligence community inspector general, who became a player in the Trump impeachment inquiry. How? Because Atkinson submitted the findings of a whistleblower who complained that Trump had abuse the power of his office by soliciting a political favor from the Ukraine president; that complaint resulted in Trump’s impeachment.

Atkinson was fired because he did his job. Trump, though, called Atkinson’s report “fake news” gleaned from a “fake report.” Which is absolute crap. Republicans in the House and Senate actually acknowledged that what Atkinson revealed was true. It wasn’t false, or phony or anything that Trump called it.

Now this venal individual who serves as president has undercut an inspector general’s role in providing transparency in the way that relief money would be spent.

Donald Trump’s ignorance and arrogance are utterly — and breathtakingly — without limit.

Disgraceful.