Calling out the president

President Trump has succeeded in uniting official Washington in a way he no doubt never anticipated.

Yesterday the two leaders of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Republican Devin Nunes and Democrat Adam Schiff, stood side by side to express their shared belief that there was no evidence to support the president’s claims that he or his associates at Trump Tower had been wiretapped.

Not that this is surprising news to that part of the nation still grounded in reality. Still to hear two members of Congress pretty much calling the president — a man who delights in ferreting out “fake news” as he defines it — a liar was an astonishing moment.

The two men have signed letters to the heads of the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency asking for a list of any names unearthed during the past six months in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Nunes added that he is concerned about the “incidental collection” of Americans’ names, possibly during electronic surveillance of Russian operatives, and the way in which they were leaked to the public. That involving the now departed National Security Adviser Mike Flynn comes immediately to mind.

FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers are expected to testify in open session next Monday on the investigation.

It was, of course, Trump himself who demanded the committee broaden its investigation following his “Obama wiretapped me” tweet storm. And while it would be easy to dismiss the allegations as just more Trumpian buffoonery, Schiff noted that such blatantly false charges cause “grave concerns . . . from a national security perspective.

“The country needs to be able to rely on him, particularly if we have a crisis that is an external crisis, as every president does within their term of office,” Schiff said.

And a president who wastes his credibility on pointless tweets may well find that when he truly needs the American people to believe him, that reservoir may have run dry.