The Louder They Scream
If you’re trying to sort out the facts from all the noise over the purported Russian involvement in the election and the Obama White House’s possible surveillance of the Trump transition team, it’s best to recall a handy rule of thumb in Washington.
Namely: The louder politicians and the press on both sides yell and scream, the less they actually know about what’s going on.
Partisans on both sides are kicking political footballs for all they’re worth — with little solid evidence to back up their claims. And the media (particularly on the liberal side) are happy to feed the frenzy with uncheckable reports.
Americans are being subjected to lots of stories and claims about “possible” developments and “what we know so far” based on anonymous sources.
Which hasn’t stopped supposedly responsible members of Congress from declaring flatly what they can’t possibly yet know for certain.
Like Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who last week claimed to have seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of active Trump-Russia collusion and that Moscow “hacked the election” — for which there is absolutely not a hint evidence.
Or the committee’s chairman, GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, who rushed before cameras — even before briefing committee Democrats — to declare he’d “confirmed” that Trump and his aides were “monitored” by US spies.
Nunes backed away from that claim Friday, saying through a spokesman he’d “have to get all the documents he requested about this before he knows for sure.” Frankly, that’s good advice for everyone. Yes, it appears campaign officials were caught up in legal surveillance. The issue is whether their identities were improperly revealed by members of the Obama administration.
The political stakes are high: Democrats are desperately trying to delegitimize Trump’s election and/or cripple him politically for as long as possible.
At this point, a credible, nonpartisan investigation will be hard to pull off. But it’s necessary — and members of Congress should wait until they actually know something for certain before speculating on “what we know so far.”