Quote:A few minutes later, answering questions from the committee, Comey calmly delivered yet more damaging news for the White House. Asked if he could confirm Trump’s tweets on March 4th that Barack Obama took steps to “tapp my phones” during the election, Comey said, “I have no information that supports those tweets.” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has tried to source his boss’s fiction to a Fox News pundit’s remark that Obama relied on British intelligence agencies to conduct the surveillance. Fox itself has renounced that claim, and British intelligence officials have called the assertion “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.” On Monday, Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, who testified alongside Comey, was asked whether he agrees with the British view, and his answer was “Yes, sir.” (Asked on Monday afternoon whether Trump will apologize for his remark, Sean Spicer said no.)
Nyer
This constant and blatant lying from the Trump White House is doing incredible damage to the US, internally and internationally. This is a much greater threat to the US and to its democracy, I think, than what Nixon did because the disregard of one of the most basic norms of civility and governance - respect for honesty and cognizance of how essential it is - is being undercut every day and Trump's followers (in fact, the large proportion of citizens who attend to rightwing media) are being trained to disregard these norms.