‘They wanted to hurt our democracy’
A Gallup poll released Sunday showed Trump’s approval rating at 37 per cent — down 8 percentage points from a week earlier, and lower than Obama’s at any point in his presidency.
But the White House and congressional Republicans have reason not to panic, yet.
For one, Gorsuch seems likely to be confirmed, barring a dramatic misstep in his confirmation hearing. That will provide the president a political win and buoy conservatives who expected deceased Justice Antonin Scalia to be replaced with a jurist of a similar ilk.
And while Comey’s testimony is certain to give fodder to Trump’s critics, White House aides were ebullient after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said his panel hadn’t seen evidence to indicate collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
“There is a big grey cloud that you’ve now put over people who have very important work to do,” Nunes told Comey at the close of the hearing.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer highlighted that former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell and former director of national intelligence James Clapper have taken the same stance, saying they had seen no evidence of Trump and the Russians working together.
“It’s clear that nothing has changed,” Spicer told reporters. “Senior Obama intelligence officials have gone on-record to confirm that there is no evidence of a Trump-Russia collusion.”
The president tweeted ahead of Comey’s testimony that allegations he’s tied to the Russians are “FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!”
“The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign,” he continued.
Some Republicans on the committee suggested Clinton’s campaign may have collaborated with Russians. Comey bluntly rejected that notion.
He said Putin’s goal was to undermine the former secretary of state’s candidacy while aiding Trump’s, as U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January.
“They wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her and help him,” Comey said. “Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.”