CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Rick Grenell being tapped as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI): Certainly in inside the White House, among the political advisers who talk to the president, around the president on a regular basis, they like this pick. They see Rick Grenell as being one of them. When you talk to a Trump adviser like I talked to a Trump adviser earlier this evening who said, listen, Rick Grenell is a polarizing figure. This is somebody who is in addition to being somebody who rubs people the wrong way up on Capitol Hill and diplomatic circles and so on because he has sharp angles, according to one Trump adviser I spoke to, he is viewed as being out of his league when it comes to the position of being the Director of National Intelligence.
I talked to a senior Republican congressional aide just a short while ago who questioned whether or not Rick Grenell could be confirmed as the permanent Director of National Intelligence and said to me earlier this evening, Anderson, this pick is obviously not going to go over well with some members of national security committees, related committees up on Capitol Hill. So it remains to be seen how well this pick does.
