President Trump announced via Twitter Wednesday that he would nominate Christopher Wray to be the next FBI director. 

Virginia Tech administrative politics expert Matthew Dull says to take that tweet with a grain of salt.

“President Trump's tweet promising a nomination should be put in context,” Dull said. “There's been a lot of news about the administration promising to send up nominees, then delaying weeks before a nomination is submitted and the ethics paperwork filed. All of this is a major departure from a tradition when administrations have tried hard to ‘hit the ground running.’ The Trump administration makes that idea seem quaint.”

Dull is an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Public & International Affairs specializing in administrative politics and American political institutions; management reform; and public policy analysis.

Read his bio.

Quoting Dull

“The FBI director is a critical position for U.S. national security. The director serves a 10-year limited term for a reason: stability in the FBI's leadership is important, and so Congress created the limited term to insulate its director. Trump created this mess. When he conjured up a reason to abruptly fire Comey, Trump created a truly rare period when the FBI does not have a confirmed director.”

“President Trump is fighting a tide of bad news. In the best case, the hearings today and tomorrow are going to be very damaging and will eat up a lot of media attention at a time Trump has promised Congress will pass an impossible legislative agenda — health care, tax reform, infrastructure — all of them stalled and with time running out.”

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