On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, former Fox News military analyst Col. Ralph Peters pulled no punches, calling President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence “utterly unqualified” and blasted his pick as a blatant attempt at cronyism: “You put a monkey in there?”

Trump’s replacement for outgoing DNI Dan Coats, three-term Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe, gained widespread attention last week when he launched a verbal tirade at Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the latter’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Several members of Congress have expressed strong misgivings about Ratcliffe’s qualifications and pointed to that very public defense of the president as essentially Ratcliffe’s job interview for the position.

“The fundamental problem seems we have a president who refuses to accept the reality whether it’s presented to him before his eyes or through an intelligence briefing,” Peters said. “I can tell you our intelligence personnel have had to reduce extremely complex issues to one page of bullet points and the president’s mind still wanders off that one page. You’ve got a guy who is not interested in intelligence, he somehow believes that he can make it up as he goes. And yes, he want sycophants. He wants yes men. He doesn’t want to be challenged and he has found what appears to me the perfect sycophant.”

Peters went on to directly challenge Ratcliffe’s credentials, telling Cooper that the Congressman, who has served just seven months on the House Intelligence Committee, was “utterly unqualified and profoundly unqualified.”

“He just shouldn’t be anywhere near the office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Peters added. “Think about the people we had, Jim Clapper, people like that, that knew what they were doing and gave their lives to intelligence, and you’re gonna put a monkey in there?”

“That person is the gate keeper, who decides what intelligence goes to the president,” he emphasized.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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