Monday morning (this morning) the House Intelligence Committee holds its first public hearing in its investigation into Russian interference–meddling sounds far too friendly–in the 2016 presidential election. While the questions of who, how and why the Russians hacked the campaign–and how we stop it from happening again–are critical to national security, the big news today will be what FBI director James Comey says when asked about President Trump’s ‘Obama-wiretapped-me’ claim. That delusion isn’t only undermining the President’s credibility at home, it is doing serious damage to his, and this country’s, credibility abroad. And Trump can’t seem to stop. His spokesman, Sean Spicer, claimed for a while that the Brits were in on it–infuriating Mr. Trump’s only pal out there, British PM May. And then POTUS made a joke about how he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had something in common: they were both wiretapped by Obama. Beyond the obvious–this man has nuclear weapons and sounds unhinged–problem, wiretapping is a hyper-sensitive issue for Merkel, who grew up in East Germany.
For background on the hearings, and whether we can realistically expect to learn anything from them given the partisan leanings of this Congress, you can read this piece I wrote this past weekend in The American Interest. And if you are wondering about the term ‘gaslighting’ in the lede, it refers to a great Ingrid Bergman movie in which she is being driven slowly crazy by her husband who, among other things, keep turning the (gas) lights up and down. We all feel that way these days, no?