Reckless charge harms credibility
Jim Geraghty, National Review: “Can a bombshell be completely expected? ... FBI Director James Comey said he has seen no evidence to support President Trump’s accusation, first leveled weeks ago on Twitter, that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 general election. ... By refusing, over and over again, to back down from Trump’s original, farfetched charge, his administration has inflicted a lot of completely unnecessary damage upon itself. ... This is what happens when the White House prioritizes winning the daily news cycle above all else. This is the natural result of an amazingly shortsighted approach to governing. ... With every such unsubstantiated accusation, the administration loses a bit of credibility that it will need when it makes an accurate charge.”
Chris Stirewalt, Fox News: “It was pretty crazy for Trump as a sitting president to throw out an unsupported accusation against Barack Obama of such magnitude. Reckless, even. But the genius part was revealed Monday as Democrats continued to chase the red herring through much of Comey’s ... testimonies. Democrats may think it a victory to get Comey to say publicly what everyone already knew ... but that’s pretty small beer. The bigger takeaway for the day’s work ought to have been Comey’s public confirmation of an ongoing investigation into whether or not anyone associated with Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russian entities during the election.”
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post: “Before Comey began his testimony (to) the House Intelligence Committee, Trump was back. ... He tweeted: ‘James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence POTUS colluded with Russia. This story is fake news and everyone knows it!’ ... That testimony is not ‘fake.’ Trump cannot change the fact that his own national intelligence team is attempting to determine whether a foreign power tried to manipulate our election. Try as he might, there is no way for Trump to discount or conceal that reality. The stone-faced Comey crisply providing definitive, unemotional testimony that was compelling, as was that of National Security Agency chief Michael S. Rogers, who, with furrowed brow, often answered with a simple yes or no.”