Sen. Susan Collins did it again and she has to know that at this point trashing the President of the U.S. is not going to win her any fans on the left.
They want her out for Brett Kavanaugh and for voting not guilty on impeachment and it looks like there is nothing she can say that will get her Dem votes.
So it’s odd when she stabs President Trump in the back on nonsense issues like firing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community.
No one really cares, except Atkinson, and Trump had the right to do it so breaking with the President on something like this can only be a political calculation. A bad one and worse, it makes her look weak.
“While I recognize that the President has the authority to appoint and remove Inspectors General, I believe Inspector General Atkinson served the intelligence community and the American people well, and his removal was not warranted,” Collins said in a statement.
The Hill reported that Collins noted that by giving the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence committees a 30-day notification that he was removing Atkinson, President Trump followed a 2008 law on inspectors general that she co-authored.
But Collins, who is facing a tough reelection race in the fall, added that she didn’t find President Trump’s “rationale” for firing Atkinson to be “persuasive.”
Trump sent shockwaves through D.C. when he announced that he was firing Atkinson, who had handled the whistleblower complaint related to Trump’s actions toward Ukraine that sparked the House impeachment inquiry.
The President defended the firing during a press conference on Saturday and called Atkinson a “disgrace” to inspectors general.
