It Looks Bad Because it is Bad

Based on the Tweets that President Trump was offering up to the Internets a short while before FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director, Adm. Mike Rogers gave their testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, it seems like he already suspected this day would make the Administration look kind of bad.

And it did. FBI Director Comey shot down the case that the Trump campaign had been the subject of wiretapping at President Obama's direction, and acknowledged that there is an ongoing investigation into the Russian interference in the US election via hacking of the DNC and the possibility of the Trump campaign colluding in this effort. Adm. Rogers rejected the possibility floated by the Trump Administration that GCHQ performed the surveillance instead.  The FBI investigation is also looking into how Russian "bots" and "trolls" helped spread stories favorable to Trump (and negative stories about Clinton) on various websites.

I'm sure House GOP Reps who tried to steer attention to "leakers" and the shameful journalists who published leaks as if they were stories were trying to help, but I'm not sure it really does--after all, the Trump campaign "lived by the leak", with Trump going all in on praising WikiLeaks when it was damaging his opponent. Also, there is a limit to how much you can blame the press for bad news when it turns out not to be fake, but true!

It does seem to me that Rep. Devin Nunes was guilty of trying too hard by mournfully bemoaning the "big, gray cloud" that the Trump Administration was now under (of their own doing, I might add) and then, and somewhat bizarrely, saying he did not know who Carter Page or Roger Stone were when asked by Mother Jones' David Corn. That just doesn't even sound likely. Work in DC much, Rep. Nunes? (Actually, he was on the Trump transition team. So there's that.) I think Press Secretary Sean Spicer might have overstrained credulity in claiming Paul Manafort only had a limited role in the Trump Campaign. Oh, really?  (And that Gen. Flynn was a campaign volunteer. You know. The kind who is a top foreign policy adviser during the campaign and then becomes National Security adviser and who sits in on intelligence briefings. Practically just an envelope-stuffer!) I know they are trying to make things look a little better for President Trump, but, it doesn't really. The denials just sound more like covering up to me.

These things look and sound bad because they are bad.  This President had been under investigation since late July. Trump deflects criticism with wild, unfounded claims that are damaging to his credibility. His party has not yet reconciled themselves to the damage he is doing, but it can't really be denied forever--

Can it? When Trump tweets mischaracterizations of testimony so that it can be debunked in real time, can anyone say this is a misunderstanding? Does it not become clear that his credibility--essential to leadership--is perhaps fatally impaired? The state of this presidency is certainly, if not bad, not good. At some point, following the "lead" of a Tweet to suppose, perhaps, that "leaks" are the real issue (and not the damaging information they reveal) or setting up a straw man of Russian hacking of electoral votes, not seriously claimed by anyone, also looks, if not bad, certainly not good.