The National Republican Congressional Committee is trying to fundraise off of House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes’ extremely suspicious claim that, as the NRCC email quotes Nunes, “Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under surveillance during the Obama administration following November's election.” Mind you, Nunes said that what’s at issue is legal “incidental collection” of Trump transition (and possibly Trump himself) communications, which—if true, something we cannot assume it to be—suggests they were talking to people who were under active surveillance. But the NRCC goes further:
Fellow Conservative, this is disturbing news.
Former President Obama is accused of spying on Donald Trump in his final days in office.
No other president has ever even been accused of spying on his successor.
“Is accused.” By Donald Trump and his loyalists, while the accusation is rejected by basically everyone else. If “Donald Trump has accused someone of something” is our new standard, life is going to get interesting. Next up: Trump accuses Obama of being able to make himself invisible to personally spy on Trump, and the NRCC fundraises off the fact that Obama is accused of being an invisible spy.
Let’s compare two statements. There’s the NRCC’s “No other president has ever even been accused of spying on his successor.” And there’s reality’s “No other president has ever been under investigation for colluding with a foreign government to interfere in U.S. elections.” Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new candidate for the definition of chutzpah. Traditionally, chutzpah has been defined as the quality possessed by someone who, having killed his parents, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan. But this takes the cake. You have a political party trying to raise money on a completely unsubstantiated accusation about a former president, made by a current president who is trying to distract from the fact that his own campaign is under FBI investigation. Even Devin Nunes’ accusations about Trump being under surveillance, accusations that Trump says make him feel somewhat vindicated, suggest that if there was surveillance of the Trump team it came in the course of surveillance of rather more traditional targets. And Nunes isn’t denying that his information came from the White House itself.
The RNC took a comparatively muted tone with its effort to fundraise off of recent days’ news: “Vindicated,” the subject line reads. But the email never quite gets around to what exactly Trump has been vindicated about—“nasty attacks” and “fake news” aside. It’s no more true than the NRCC’s effort, but the NRCC’s mind-blowingly dishonest specificity wins the competition for most outrageous fundraising email of the week, if not the month, if not the year.