NY Times:
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
A statement by the Justice Department or Mr. Comey refuting Mr. Trump’s allegations would be a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement officials in the position of questioning the truthfulness of the government’s top leader. The situation underscores the high stakes of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.
This is all about Trump running from the Russian connection and trying to distract while feeding his conspiracy theory habit. More on that below.
Karen Tumulty/WaPo:
Donald Trump’s presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails.
The president’s accusation Saturday that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had tapped his phone “during the very sacred election process” escalated on Sunday into the White House’s call for a congressional investigation of that evidence-free claim.
GQ:
This insane accusation-filled rant was clearly Trump's latest attempt to steal focus from the mounting story about his campaign and Russia. Only this time it didn't work. If anything it brought focus more acutely upon the scandal. And it also revealed something telling about where his head's at. Donald Trump's getting desperate. This is your kid brother calling nothing but "Hail Mary" passes when you're beating him by two touchdowns in Madden. He's flailing.
Jonathan Chait/New York:
Trump’s New Russia Scandal Defense Is to Pose as the Victim of Obama
But intellectual coherence or consistency are not baseline requirements for the messaging task Trump needs. If the Russia scandal continues to produce revelations of unethical or unpatriotic behavior by his campaign, he will need a response that can rally the conservative base behind him (and thus make Republicans in Congress reluctant to support independent investigations or even impeachment proceedings.) Turning the charge against Obama does that for him. It reframes the issue as a matter of the hated Obama abusing his power to discredit Trump. Any information flowing from the scandal is therefore presumptively tainted by its association with the former president.
The benefit of this line of reasoning is that it does not require conservatives to actually defend Trump’s behavior. All that’s needed is for their distrust of Obama to overcome their misgivings about Trump – a condition that describes virtually the entire Republican base. Notably, Mark Levin himself had lined up behind Ted Cruz against Trump during the presidential primary, calling Trump’s attacks on Cruz “Nixonian” and – even using the strongest rebuke in the conservative movement lexicon – “Alinskyite.” Now Levin is back on the team and, having forgotten his earlier diagnosis of Trump’s character and honesty, redirecting his anger against the Democrats. Conveniently for Trump, while unifying his base, attacking the alleged crimes of Obama also attracts support from left-wing sources like the Nation and the Intercept, which have consistently dismissed the Russia scandal as “neo-McCarthyism.”
This is what they are doing, but it doesn’t mean it’ll work outside their core base of True Believers.
Juliette Kayyam/CNN:
Don't expect 'smoking gun' in investigation of Russia role in 2016 election
Even as these pieces keep piling up, the Trump administration seems unable to recognize that until it embraces a thorough and impartial review, the pieces will be viewed in the light least favorable to them.
It is, from any evidentiary perspective, difficult to say that the accumulation of all this information -- including
another important story in the New York Times reporting that European surveillance picked up communications between Russia and the Trump team -- points toward the idea that Russia acted entirely alone.
Determining where the pendulum stops is why these investigations must move forward. No one, maybe not even the investigators, can know right now where this ends. No smoking gun, perhaps. Only a lot of pieces of a puzzle that need to put together to come up with a better picture of why our democracy was undermined.
CJR:
Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda
THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SHOOK the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory—with theories ranging from Russian hacking to “fake news.”
We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton. …
The right-wing media was also able to bring the focus on immigration, Clinton emails, and scandals more generally to the broader media environment. A sentence-level analysis of stories throughout the media environment suggests that Donald Trump’s substantive agenda—heavily focused on immigration and direct attacks on Hillary Clinton—came to dominate public discussions.
Learning how to talk about science and climate change is very much like learning to talk politics. Some examples:
The Conversation:
How to talk climate change across the aisle: Focus on adaptive solutions rather than causes
Theories offer competing predictions on whether engaging in adaptation will reduce our mitigation efforts. People may feel less urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through mitigation if we interpret our adaptation as progress and preparedness, lessening our “felt need” to mitigate.
On the other hand, people may come to see both mitigation and adaptation as a commitment to doing all that is needed to cope with climate change, and view the two solution strategies as complementary rather than substitutes.
Ideally, adaptation is a gateway strategy for cooperation, a common ground for conversation and the beginnings of continued collaboration. Ideally, too, adaptation efforts will reveal more about the full costs of climate change. After all, action now and at the source (mitigation) is both cheaper and higher leverage than forever adapting into the future.
Adapting to change (build a sea wall) vs mitigation (cut carbon emissions)? Those who are concerned about climate changed will rightly say: both. But that’s not the point of this article. The point is talking to people who don’t agree with you. So do you insist on being right or look for agreement where you can find it, and get some good out of it? Seems to me it’s a problem for political discussion as well.
Kevin M.Folta:
Back to the challenge. How to best talk about climate change? It was revisiting communications 101—know your audience. I was speaking to farmers and ranchers, a crowd with diverse thoughts and politics. There are a few general trends. They are folks that that tend to vote and align with political leadership that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. At the same time they are not easily snookered into a position when they can see the facts for themselves. They are a community tends to be skeptical of all inflammatory claims, and is always on high alert for government over-reach. Again, sweeping generalizations.
So what was the best strategy to provide a compelling presentation? I decided to appeal to their keen observation skills and our common-core values.
Same idea, different author. And our common-core values? Sounds familiar.
Tom Nichols/SciAm:
How Does the Public’s View of Science Go So Wrong?
It happens because some people reject expert information when it goes against their personal values
The debate over climate change is a good example of this problem. Is the earth’s climate changing? Most experts believe it is, and they believe they know why. Whether their models, extrapolated out for decades and centuries, are accurate is a legitimate area for scientific debate. What experts cannot answer, however, is what to do about climate change. It might well be that Boston will be underwater in fifty years, but it might well also be that voters— who have the right to be wrong— will choose to shift that problem to later generations rather than to risk jobs (or comfort) now.
Letting Boston slide into the harbor is not my preferred outcome. But experts cannot compel civic engagement, and they must accept that their advice, which might seem obvious and right to them, will not always be taken in a democracy that may not value the same things they do. The job of mediating those values and policies lies with elected officials, not with scientists or other experts. The knowers cannot—and in a constitutional republic, should not—be the deciders.