Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, #MoscowMitch, is going to have some thinking to do about how he approaches the nomination of Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas to be the new director of national intelligence. Because it's pretty darned clear that the issue of Russia is looming very large in both current DNI Dan Coats' departure and Ratcliffe's nomination.

Coats has clashed with Donald Trump previously on Russian election interference. Early on, in March of 2017, according to special counsel Robert Mueller's report, Trump tried to get Coats to make a statement saying that there had been no connection between Trump and Russia. "Coats responded that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has nothing to do with investigations and it was not his role to make a public statement on the Russia investigation," the report says.

For instance, when Trump appeared with Vladimir Putin in a joint news conference in Helsinki last year and said he believed Putin's declaration that Russia hadn't tried to interfere in the 2016 election, Coats immediately issued a statement saying, "We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security."

Then, late last year, Coats conducted an assessment of Russian and other foreign countries’ attempts to interfere in the 2018 midterm election. That was a harsh assessment, according to The New York Times, "about Russia’s efforts to influence the American public by stoking conspiracy theories and polarization." The public statement released by Coats had been edited by the White House to exclude that tough language.

So it's hardly surprising that, ahead of the 2020 election, the guy who has been trying to combat election interference is being replaced by one who said in the Mueller hearings last week that he believed any interference by Russia in 2016 was in "providing false information through sources to Christopher Steele about a Trump conspiracy that you determined didn't exist." That performance, his audition for this job, did the trick, and he got the nomination.

But that doesn't mean he'll get the job, and that's very much in McConnell's hands. One word from him to Trump could scuttle the nomination. Since McConnell seems to be counting on that election interference and in fact continues to block election security legislation aimed at preventing it, I wouldn't hold my breath on his stepping in.