So long, and thanks for all the fish! - The Washington Post

The<a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/fix-notes/get-your-fix.html"> first post</a> I wrote for The Fix was on Oct. 3, 2005.  That was 4,193 days ago.

This is how I described my goal for the blog <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/fix-notes/get-your-fix.html">in that post</a>:

I will be your cruise director through these (somewhat) uncharted waters. Expect to see daily posts on a range of political topics, from the latest 2008 wannabe to take a trip to Iowa to who's up and who's down in the race for control of Congress in 2006.

It makes me proud to say that, 11½ years later, that's still the guiding mission of this blog we've built together.

A lot — and I mean a lot — has changed over that decade-plus. What was once just me writing is now a terrific team of people who will keep The Fix vibrant for years to come. There was no Twitter when I started The Fix. You Tube was barely a blip until “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI">macaca</a>” happened in the summer of 2006.  Politico didn't exist when I started The Fix. National Journal still published a print edition. Barack Obama was just a freshman senator from Illinois. Donald Trump was a reality-TV star. I was 29, married but without Fix Jr or Fix III.

You get the idea. It has been a decade of amazing tumult in politics and journalism (and my life!).

This will be my final post for The Fix. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/03/13/cnn-hires-chris-cillizza-away-from-the-washington-post/">I've left The Washington Post to take a job writing, reporting and, well, talking on TV for CNN</a>.  It was — and is — an opportunity too good for me to pass up.

I hope many of you will follow my work there and on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/CillizzaCNN">@CillizzaCNN</a>. I'm really excited for what I can build next.

I mostly just wanted to say thank you. For reading. For writing.  And, yes, even for critiquing.  The Fix was always a passion project for me.  That I got to do it as my job has been a source of tremendous joy.  So, thank you — and see you around.

Chris Cillizza wrote “The Fix,” a politics blog for The Washington Post. He left The Post in April 2017. 

Chris Cillizza

The Washington Post

The Fix

The Washington Post's political analysis blog.

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

Politics

Donald Trump played a game of chicken with House Republicans. Then he blinked. Bigly. - The Washington Post

Peter

Jenny

Donald Trump was elected in large part on one, loud promise: I know how to make deals these normal politicians don't.

Part of that mystique — as outlined in his best-selling book “The Art of the Deal” — is the willingness to call his rival's bluff, to put his cards on the table and ask everyone else to do the same.

That's what Trump did Thursday night after a postponement of the planned vote to begin the process of reforming the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans needed to put up or shut up, Trump insisted. Despite being told the votes simply weren't there, Trump pushed forward — arguing that it was now or never.

It was vintage Trump, taking a gamble no other typical politician would take: Force a vote on a massive part of your legislative agenda with an uncertain outcome.

Hours after Trump huddled with Speaker Paul D. Ryan at the White House, he told The Post's Bob Costa that he had decided congressional Republicans should pull the legislation. The votes simply weren't there, and the possibility of real embarrassment on the House floor existed.

Sure. But, Trump was elected as an outsider — someone who ran against the system. <a href="https://twitter.com/hughhewitt/status/845361164817084417">Why not force that system to go on the record with either their support or opposition</a>?

Now begins the blame game. And there's plenty to go around. The White House was already starting to point the finger at Ryan for making health-care reform the first legislative priority of the new Republican-controlled Washington. Rank and file members were suggesting that simply not enough time was given to thinking about what was in the bill before it was offered. <a href="https://twitter.com/RepKinzinger/status/845368730678956036">Establishment Republicans blamed the House Freedom Caucus for their refusal to compromise</a>.

All true! But Trump is the president of the United States. Trump ran as the only person who could solve the major problems facing the country. Trump was the one who billed himself as the dealmaker extraordinaire, the guy who had faced down people in corporate boardrooms all over the country and all over the world — and won.

But when the time came to push all his chips to the middle of the table, Trump folded. Period. Beyond the spin, that is what happened here. If Trump had continued to insist that the bill be put to a vote, trust me that Ryan would have done it despite his reservations.

What you are likely to hear over the next few hours and days is that Trump did so because no deal is better than a bad deal. The problem with that argument is Trump's Twitter paper trail. Friday, as the House prepared to vote, Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/845247455868391425">tweeted</a> that this legislation was a great chance for Republicans to make good on their campaign promises — calling the legislation a “great plan.”

Trump will, as he always does, somehow declare victory and move on. “The beauty,” Trump told Costa, “is that they [Democrats] own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.”

The simple fact, however, is that Trump wanted this deal, pushed for this deal, called his own party's bluff on this deal and then walked away when it appeared as though the deal wouldn't come together.

Dealmaker Donald played chicken. But he lost his nerve at the last minute.

Donald Trump promised to make the ‘best’ deals. It’s time to prove it on healthcare. - The Washington Post

Update 3/24:  Today is the big day for Donald Trump.  The vote in the House is set for Friday and, as of this writing, the votes for the bill are not yet there.  In light of the tightness of the margin, I'm re-posting this piece I wrote two weeks ago about how health care is Trump's chance to prove how he can make the best deals.

Donald Trump was elected president on this basic idea: Everyone currently in the government is dumb and makes bad deals. I am smart and make good deals.

Many people believed that despite their doubts about Trump's style and persona he was, fundamentally, right. Government had over-promised and under-delivered for way too long. Politicians had their chance. Now it was time to turn things over to someone who had actually sat across a boardroom table and cut deals in the real world.

Enter the new health-care bill that aims to remove several major tenets of the Affordable Care Act and replace them with more conservative proposals. The legislation, which two House committees have begun to debate today, is already under fire from conservatives dissatisfied with the expansion of Medicaid remaining in place and from moderates concerned about penalizing people who fall off the insurance rolls. Less than 24 hours after the legislation was first unveiled, some members of the House Freedom Caucus, the GOP's most conservative wing, <a href="https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/839306920473292801">were declaring it DOA</a>.

And then there was <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidWright_CNN/status/839507429419270145">this</a> from Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), a leading libertarian voice in the House:

It's safe to say that's not the reception the bill's authors were hoping for from within their own party — particularly on the signature legislative promise GOP elected officials made to the base for the better part of the last decade.

This is where the rubber meets the road for Dealmaker Donald. If this bill goes down, it's a major political problem for Republicans. Not only would their base be demoralized/angry, it could also alienate independents who voted for Trump believing he might, maybe, actually be able to change things. Heck, <a href="https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/839268783382491137">even Trump acknowledges this reality</a>.

Voting for Trump was voting for real change in how Washington works — no matter the way that change happened. Sure his methods are unorthodox and, sure, he says and does some things I don't like, but if he can get things done that make my life better then I'm all for him. That's how lots and lots of people approached the 2016 vote.

If Trump can't make those deals happen, then what is he left with? He is just a guy who says and does things you don't really like.

To his credit, Trump seems to grasp the stakes here. He huddled with members of the House Republican whip team on Tuesday night. Wednesday afternoon, he gathered conservatives at the White House. Tonight, Trump hosts Sen. Ted Cruz, a 2016 primary challenger and a vocal opponent to the current health-care replacement law, for dinner. (I'd love to be a fly on the wall for THAT one.)

“We are going to have a full-court press,” confirmed White House press secretary Sean Spicer in his daily news briefing Wednesday. "If anyone can get a deal done, it's Donald Trump."

Make no mistake: This is a time of proving for Trump. He ran on a unique ability to cut deals. He can't fail in his first chance to do just that.

Republicans have met the enemy on health care. It’s them. - The Washington Post

Sarah

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: House Republicans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/gop-health-care-plan-hangs-in-balance-as-house-leaders-push-for-thursday-floor-vote/2017/03/23/6e8bf05a-0fbd-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_obamacare-805a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;utm_term=.e21fd36b8fbc">postponed a vote on a major piece of legislation</a> set for Thursday night amid doubts that they could gather the 216 votes they needed to pass the bill.

The White House — via spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders — expressed confidence in the face of the setback, insisting that the GOP attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system will pass Friday morning. But according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/07/whip-count-heres-where-skeptical-republicans-stand-on-the-gops-obamacare-replacement/">Fix’s House whip count</a>, 37 House Republicans have already announced their opposition to the bill in its current form. Republicans can only afford 22 “no” votes — assuming, of course, that no Democrats will vote for the bill.

The legislation may pass — either Friday or over the weekend. (It almost certainly won’t pass without changes.) But House Republicans had to be feeling a sense of deja vu as it became clear Thursday that despite the efforts of President Trump and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the votes simply weren’t there to pass the legislation.

Republicans — led by then-Speaker John A. Boehner — failed time and time again to rally votes behind proposals, from the fiscal cliff in 2012 to the farm bill in 2013 to the debt ceiling in 2014. Each time, the conservative wing of the conference — now organized under the House Freedom Caucus — withheld their votes, insisting that the legislation offered by Boehner was an abandonment of principles.

The inability to appease the party’s conservative wing while also keeping the centrists within the party — yes, they still exist — on board is what <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/25/john-boehner-just-sacrificed-his-career-for-the-good-of-the-republican-party/">drove Boehner into a surprisingly early retirement</a>.

That was then, this is now, Republicans argued in the run-up to the planned health-care vote. Ryan was someone, unlike Boehner, who the House Freedom Caucus liked and trusted. And with Trump in the White House and Republicans with a large House majority and a clear Senate majority, the problems of the last five years were a thing of the past.

Except not. As Republicans have learned over the past few weeks — and especially in the last few days — having a majority of House and Senate seats as well as the White House ensures you nothing in terms of legislation.

The problem for House Republicans today is the same problem they had in 2012 and 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016. The conference — split, broadly speaking, between activist conservatives and establishment conservatives — simply cannot be consistently led. The House Freedom Caucus not only believes compromise is capitulation but also views Trump’s election last fall as evidence of how unapologetic conservatism can win. The establishment wing of the party — which represents the bulk of competitive seats in swing areas of the country like the Midwest — frets that caving to conservative interests within the GOP could cost them their jobs in the next election.

Since he began running for president, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/08/its-put-up-or-shut-up-time-for-president-trump/?utm_term=.37069387a697">Trump has portrayed himself as a person uniquely able to bring warring sides to the table and cut good deals</a>. That’s why getting some sort of health-care deal matters so much to him.

But Thursday proved that not even Dealmaker Donald can point in a direction and lead the GOP majority behind him. Some men (and women) just can’t be reached.

Donald Trump is going to be livid if his health-care bill fails in the House - The Washington Post

Bastien

Donald Trump doesn't handle setbacks all that well.

Take that time when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential campaign. The next  day, Trump insisted that something nefarious had taken place.

“Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he illegally stole it,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/03/donald-trump-tweets-that-ted-cruz-stole-iowa-illegally-and-quickly-deletes-the-illegally/?utm_term=.040774dbec3c">Trump tweeted</a>. “That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

Or <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&amp;ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politifact.com%2Ftruth-o-meter%2Fstatements%2F2016%2Fnov%2F28%2Fdonald-trump%2Fdonald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-millions-illegal-vo%2F">that time</a> when he won the electoral college over Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote by more than 3 million.

Trump not only hates losing but also seems to refuse to accept it — either denying the loss entirely or putting the blame on someone (anyone) other than himself.

Which brings me to tomorrow's much-anticipated vote on the first stage of Trump's efforts to reform the Affordable Care Act.  Trump has made it very clear that he is all in on ensuring that the plan gets to 216 votes in the House — and has followed through with repeated visits with wavering Republican members of Congress to cajole them to be for the bill. (Trump headlined a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner Tuesday night, for example.)

And yet, most whip counts — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/07/whip-count-heres-where-skeptical-republicans-stand-on-the-gops-obamacare-replacement/?utm_term=.da8fb82fc4f3">including The Post's</a> — suggest that if the vote happened today, the bill would fail, albeit narrowly.

Trump — and White House press secretary Sean Spicer — have been careful to focus on the carrot, not the stick for Republican members who are against them. Sure, Trump joked with House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trump-arrives-on-capitol-hill-to-sell-house-gop-health-care-package/2017/03/21/e8ede3d2-0e2b-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?utm_term=.67baf9ddd207">he would “come after” him if he voted “no”</a> but, by and large, the president has tried to emphasize the positives of voting for the bill — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/21/donald-trump-predicts-gop-will-gain-10-senate-seats-if-they-pass-the-healthcare-bill-probably-not/?utm_term=.9867f8fc1113">including massive (and unlikely) seat gains</a>.

“One of the things that he made clear this morning was that he was going to make sure that the people who did support this, he would be out there supporting them,” Spicer told reporters during his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/21/daily-press-briefing-press-secretary-25">Tuesday news conference</a>. “And so I’m not going to focus on the negative as much as the positive today.”

But it's also clear in Trump's “joke” to Meadows or Spicer's assertion that the members who vote against the bill will “probably pay a price at home” that menace lies just below the surface here. Trump has never demonstrated a willingness or an ability to take the high road when faced with adversity. He views dissent as disloyalty — and he HATES disloyalty.

The most likely reaction from Trump if the Republican-controlled House votes down the health-care proposal Thursday night then is anger — and payback. Trump is vengeful as a politician — his ouster of Chris Christie, his shabby treatment of Mitt Romney post-election — and believes it's central to his brand and his effectiveness. People need to know that when they act in ways he doesn't approve of, there are real consequences. Not like, “Hey, I wish you hadn't done that” consequences, either. Like, beat-you-in-an-election consequences.

If Trump goes full napalm on Republicans in the event of a failed health-care vote, it probably dooms any chance of taking another bite at that apple. Which means that Republicans will head into the midterm elections having not done the one thing they promised to do for the past decade if they somehow got control of all levers of power in Washington.

I'm not sure Trump would care. He would likely view those members as getting what they deserved for refusing to be for something he wanted. And he might even conclude that an election bashing in 2018 would help convince congressional Republicans that being for him is the only way for them to survive.

There is, of course, the much smaller possibility that Trump plays good cop in the wake of a failed vote and works with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to cobble together some other health-care proposal that would give Republicans on the ballot in 2018 something to take to their constituents.

But everything we know about Trump suggests the former option is WAY more likely than the latter. Would it create chaos for Republicans if Trump took that path? Yes. But he likes chaos.

Donald Trump keeps getting things wrong. And there’s not much we can do about it. - The Washington Post

Reuters

National

Here are the first two lines of a terrific piece written Monday by <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker">Philip Rucker</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ashleyrparker">Ashley Parker</a>:

On the 60th day of his presidency came the hardest truth for Donald Trump.

Which is right. Trump spent the last month insisting that President Barack Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower despite offering zero evidence to back up that claim. And, on Monday, FBI Director James B. Comey made very clear — in a public congressional hearing no less! — that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-testify-on-russian-interference-in-the-presidential-election/2017/03/20/cdea86ca-0ce2-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fbidirector-750a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;tid=a_inl&amp;utm_term=.d1d053bdb6ad">neither the FBI nor the broader Justice Department had found any support for that claim</a>.

Comey joins former director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and Obama in insisting that no evidence exists to back up Trump’s claim. Trump and his senior aides continue to make vague assurances that other information might be out there, but have yet to offer any proof for those claims.

Put simply: It’s now fairly obvious that the current president of the United States made a baseless and serious accusation about the man he succeeded in the White House. He claimed, falsely, that he had been wiretapped and insinuated it was part of a broader effort led by the sitting administration to keep him from winning.

And it is! But, the truth of the matter is that the consequences for Trump for this sort of behavior are, well, very amorphous.

Democrats — and even some Republicans — are calling on Trump to apologize to Obama. But, beyond that? Nothing. And, even an apology from Trump, which — guess what? — isn't coming, seems like a very small price to pay for the allegation.

The simple fact is that short of impeachment, which is used extremely sparingly and rightly so, there is a relative pittance of punitive measures for a president like Trump who is willing to say things that just aren’t true. Shame has long been the tool of choice in politics. As in: A president says something that fact-checkers rule is totally false. The president, concerned — even if he won’t acknowledge it — about how he is perceived by the political class, either apologizes for the remark or just stops saying it. Like the political class or hate them, that shaming was a way of regulating political rhetoric.

Trump is not interested in the opinions of the political class. In fact, he likes the idea of sticking it to those people and believes it is fundamental to his political brand. Which it is! The issue, in this context, is that without any sort of way to regulate or punish Trump short of impeachment, it means that the president has very few limitations on what he says or does.

No modern president has taken advantage of that fact in ways that Trump has. He simply creates his own reality — often through tweets to <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump">his 26.8 million followers</a> — and then ignores any attempts to hold him accountable to the facts. Because shame doesn’t work on him, there’s almost nothing to be done to change his behavior.

Trump is a president unlike any we have ever seen before. His willingness to stretch the bounds of truth — and then be unapologetic about doing so — is something we’ve not seen on a regular basis in the White House before now. (Yes, Republicans, Bill Clinton lied about his affair with a White House intern. And he was impeached — by the House — for it.) Trump understands that the punitive consequences for continuing to insist that he was wiretapped are relatively minimal. And so he will keep doing it.

Can you name a Supreme Court Justice? You’re in the minority. - The Washington Post

The talk of Washington today — and tomorrow and the next day — is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/supreme-court-nominee-gorsuch-starts-day-two-of-confirmation-hearings/2017/03/20/ccd81b02-0dbf-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_gorsuch-708a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;utm_term=.53bad479b765">confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch</a>, President Trump's nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Court confirmations are the biggest soap operas in the nation's capital — where senators (and staff members) make names for themselves for years to come.

Washington's obsession with the court is one of the places where we are least in touch with the average American who, according to a <a href="https://static.c-span.org/assets/documents/scotusSurvey/CSPAN%20PSB%20Supreme%20Court%20Survey%20COMPREHENSIVE%20AGENDA%20sent%2003%2013%2017.pdf">new C-SPAN poll</a>, barely even knows the names of anyone on the court.

Asked whether they could name a single — just ONE — Supreme Court justice, just more than 4 in 10 people (43 percent) said they could (and then actually named one.) A quick bit of math shows that 57 percent of our fellow Americans can't name ONE court justice. Not one. I mean. Wow.

Only three justices clocked in double digits in terms of name identification: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (almost certainly driven by the<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Notorious-RBG-Times-Bader-Ginsburg/dp/0062415832"> whole “Notorious RBG” thing</a>), Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Clarence Thomas. Anthony M. Kennedy, who has been on the court since 1988, was named by 1 percent of likely voters. Stephen G. Breyer, who has been on the court since 1994, was named by a total of 0 percent of likely voters. Zero!

These new C-SPAN numbers are eye-opening, but they are far from an isolated incident when it comes to demonstrating how little interest regular people have in the court. In 2010, Pew asked people to name the chief justice. <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/2010/08/03/the-invisible-court/">Here's the result</a>:

More than half of respondents had no idea. One in 4 people correctly named John G. Roberts Jr. as the chief justice. Others named Thurgood Marshall, who was never the chief justice and who died in 1993, and Harry M. Reid, who isn't a judge at all but at the time was a sitting U.S. senator.

It's clear that the average person has little knowledge of the people who sit on the highest court in the country. What's remarkable — at least to me — is that in the <a href="https://static.c-span.org/assets/documents/scotusSurvey/CSPAN%20PSB%20Supreme%20Court%20Survey%20COMPREHENSIVE%20AGENDA%20sent%2003%2013%2017.pdf">C-SPAN poll</a> 90 percent of people agreed with the statements that “decisions made by the Supreme Court have an impact on my everyday life as a citizen.”

So a huge majority of people believe what the court decides makes a real difference in their lives, but a majority also can't name a single court justice.

Winners and losers from the James Comey hearing - The Washington Post

FBI Director <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-testify-on-russian-interference-in-the-presidential-election/2017/03/20/cdea86ca-0ce2-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fbidirector-750a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;utm_term=.885f92d6ec80">James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers testified before the House Intelligence Committee</a> on Monday, a highly anticipated event that yielded confirmation of an investigation into contacts between Donald Trump's campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election.

I watched, <a href="http://twitter.com/thefix">tweeted</a> and picked some of the best and worst of the hearing. Here they are:

* James Comey: Comey is an old hand at these sorts of hearings. But he still put on a command performance on Monday. He wanted to make two points: 1) The FBI is investigating connections and possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Russian intelligence officials, and 2) zero evidence has been found by either the FBI or the broader Justice Department to support <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-nixonwatergate-plot-to-wire-tap-trump-tower/?utm_term=.2a39703a9804">Trump's wiretapping claims</a>. Comey did both — and those were the two main headlines of the day. He also displayed a remarkable ability to walk the very fine line between what he could say and what he should say. The FBI director was polite but firm and totally unwilling to entertain the dozens of hypotheticals thrown at him by members of Congress on both sides.

* Adam B. Schiff: Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, was the most effective panel member from his party in laying out the Russia case and undermining Trump's wiretapping claims. It wasn't perfect — he went on way too long at the opening of the hearing when everyone and their brother wanted to hear from Comey — but Schiff asked the right questions in a straightforward and intelligible way. His profile has soared amid the ongoing Russia investigation, and his performance on Monday won't slow that rise. The question is what Schiff wants to do next. If Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) decides not to run for reelection in 2018, that might be an opportunity for Schiff to move onto an even bigger stage.

* Trey Gowdy: The South Carolina congressman isn't everyone's cup of tea. He mugs for the cameras, dramatically pauses and, broadly speaking, knows he is performing for a national (cable) audience every second. Those quirks notwithstanding, I thought Gowdy did the best job of scoring points on the question of the illegality of the leaks coming out of the intelligence community — better than Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who chairs the committee. Gowdy also has a sense of humor — about himself and politics more generally — that I thought he showcased nicely, particularly in the waning moments of the very long hearing.

Adriana

* Elise Stefanik: The Republican from New York is one of the most junior members of the committee. Which means she didn't get first, second or even third cut at questioning Comey or Rogers. In fact, she didn't get to ask her first question until the hearing had gone on for more than four hours. Still, Stefanik was insightful and probing — asking good questions that actually elicited responses from Comey and Rogers. Kudos.

* Donald Trump: During a break in the action around 1 p.m. Eastern time, former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) acknowledged on CNN that the morning had not gone well for the president. Correct. For all of the attempts by Republican members to focus on the potential criminality of the leaking from the intelligence community, the big takeaways — no wiretapping evidence, an ongoing Russia investigation — were bad news for Trump. Perhaps trying to turn things around, he tweeted <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843863057516380161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">this</a> around lunchtime:

But Comey did no such thing. He simply didn't comment on a question Gowdy asked him. And Comey had made clear repeatedly during the day that his refusal to answer certain questions should, in no way, be taken as a tacit admission of anything. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/20/comey-please-dont-draw-conclusions-from-my-no-comments-trump-nah-im-good/?utm_term=.87912b36be3d">Which, of course, is exactly what Trump did</a>. Coming out of the hearing, the questions about wiretapping and Russia are going to grow louder. And that's bad for Trump.

* K. Michael Conaway: The Texas Republican seemed to think he had spotted a crack in Comey's answer about the goal of Russian hacking in the election. The FBI and the NSA had earlier said that the hacking was intended to undermine the U.S. democratic process, hurt Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the 2016 election and help elect Trump. Comey, Conaway suggested, had inferred that Russia wanted Trump to win simply because it had worked to keep her from becoming president. Boom! Roasted! Except that, as Comey quickly pointed out, there were only two viable candidates. Meaning that if Russia wanted one to lose, it, by default, wanted the other one to win. Here's a look at Conaway after that Comey answer:

* The media: Comey doesn't seem to think much of us. He repeatedly noted that he sees incorrect reporting about classified information all the time in the media — and chooses not to correct it. Not great. For us.

* Questions that aren't really questions: This hearing was absolutely lousy with these sorts of questions — from members on both sides of the aisle. One example from an unnamed member (mostly because I can't remember who it was): “You are aware that Paul Manafort was a member of Donald Trump's senior campaign staff? And that Manafort has ties to Ukraine? Can you confirm Mr. Manafort is a target of the FBI investigation?”

Sean Spicer’s answer on wiretapping was totally and completely nonsensical - The Washington Post

Video: Jenny Starrs / Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

Hours after FBI Director<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/20/james-comey-just-made-it-impossible-for-donald-trump-to-keep-saying-he-was-wire-tapped/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/20/james-comey-just-made-it-impossible-for-donald-trump-to-keep-saying-he-was-wire-tapped/"> James B. Comey made clear that no evidence existed to back up President Trump’s claim that he had been the subject of a wiretap ordered by Barack Obama</a>, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about it. His answer, put plainly, didn’t make much sense.

Here’s the somewhat lengthy back-and-forth — as transcribed by The Post’s<a href="http://twitter.com/peterwstevenson"> Peter Stevenson</a>:

REPORTER: Sean, what constitutes conclusive evidence to the president, when you say there’s more to come forward? You’ve got the FBI director saying nothing backed up the president’s tweets about wiretapping, former head of the DNI, House Intelligence Committee saying it, you’ve had a series of officials. So when does this end for the president? Is it March 28?

SPICER: It’s not a question of a day, it’s a question of where we get answers. You look at someone like Michael Flynn, and you ask the question, how does an American citizen, who should be protected by law from having their identity unmasked, how does that happen? Because you’ve gotta think about it like this: The FBI and all of the relevant intelligence agencies have access to this document. They can figure out who it was.

REPORTER: Who it was? The wiretapping of the president. That’s the claim.

SPICER: I understand that. What I’m getting at is that there’s a lot of information that we have come to learn about what happened in terms of surveillance throughout the 2016 election and the transition. And when you look at somebody like Michael Flynn, and you realize that, while they might have been looking at somebody else at that time, how does somebody’s name that’s protected by law from being disclosed get put out in public? Why was it put out in the public? Because the people in the intelligence community would have had access to that information. They could have found out who it was. But yet, you’ve got to question, why was a name that should have been protected by law from being put out into the public domain, put out there? What were the motives behind that? What else do we need to know? Who was behind that kind of unmasking?

Go back and read that again. Now tell me what you think Spicer is trying to say.

Video: Reuters / Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

I read over Spicer’s answer a bunch of times. Here’s what I think he is saying.

Despite the comments made by Comey, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and lots of other members of the intelligence community, the White House still wants to know how The Washington Post learned that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed economic sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. Spicer’s assertion is that the FBI and “all of the relevant intelligence agencies” have the ability to know where this information came from but have so far refused to find out. “Why was a name that should have been protected by law from being put out into the public domain, put out there?” Spicer asked. “What were the motives behind that? What else do we need to know? Who was behind that kind of unmasking?”

First and most important, Spicer is answering a question not asked of him. The question is what evidence does President Trump have of the wiretap that none of the intelligence officials know exists? And, at what point will he come forward with that information? The question Spicer answered is about how Flynn’s recording was made and why it was made public. A worthy question! But not the one asked.

Second, there is simply no good answer for Spicer on the question he was asked. Either Trump didn’t have any actual evidence for his wiretapping claim or Comey, Clapper, former president Barack Obama and the Republican and Democratic heads of the House Intelligence Committee are not telling the truth. Because all of them are on record saying that zero evidence exists for the claims Trump made about wiretapping. Trump can’t be right unless they are wrong. And vice versa.

Spicer — I think — knows this. He also knows his boss is deeply dug in on the issue — facts be damned. And so, there’s just no answer he can give that satisfies all parties. Instead, he answers a question no one asked him and one that is only tangentially related to the matter of whether the president of the United States has some secret evidence that he was wiretapped by the previous administration. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Welcome to the less-than-wonderful world of being Donald Trump’s spokesman.

James B. Comey complicated the life of every Republican elected official today - The Washington Post

FBI Director James B. Comey made one thing abundantly clear Monday: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-testify-on-russian-interference-in-the-presidential-election/2017/03/20/cdea86ca-0ce2-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html">There is zero evidence that Donald Trump or Trump Tower was wiretapped</a> during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I have no information that supports those tweets,” Comey told House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), confirming that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department had found any evidence of the alleged wiretapping after a very close look.

Comey's denial of wiretapping comes on the heels of similar statements by former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., former president Barack Obama and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

For Trump to continue to make the case that he was wiretapped by Obama during the 2016 election, you must believe that the current FBI director is lying in a public, nationally televised congressional hearing. And that the former director of national intelligence was lying. And that Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, is lying that Britain was not involved in a wiretapping program at the behest of the American government.

That's a very, very, very, very tough sell.

Now, there are ways around this — and a number of the Republican members on the Intelligence Committee are taking Trump's lead in suggesting them. The prime pushback is that when Trump used the word “wiretapping,” he didn't actually mean wiretapping. Instead he meant a broader palette of potential means of surveillance. And so, by denying, specifically, the words “wiretapping,” Comey and the rest are playing word games and not broadly denying that someone, somewhere was watching or listening to the Republican presidential nominee.

It is possible — in the broadest sense of that word — that such a theory could have some validity. But it is the longest of long shots, and to believe it, you have to believe that people like Comey and Clapper purposely obfuscated when asked direct questions about whether Trump was being surveilled.

Given Comey's flat denial of any evidence of Trump Tower being wiretapped, there will be increased pressure on both Trump and Republican members of Congress to back off that position and apologize for it. Reps. <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/tom-cole-trump-should-apologize-obama-wiretapping-claim-236170">Tom Cole</a> (R-Okla.) and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/rep-bill-hurd-intelligence-committee-erin-burnett-outfront-cnntv/">Will Hurd</a> (R-Tex.) have already called on Trump to apologize to Obama. It's hard to imagine that other GOPers won't follow that lead in light of Comey's testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

Trump is another matter. His offhand remark at a joint news appearance Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that perhaps he and she had both been wiretapped by the Obama administration suggests he isn't planning to leave the issue alone — much less apologize for it.

And we know that for 35 to 40 percent of the public, that will be enough; they simply trust Trump more than they trust any intelligence official or media outlet.

But that's sort of beside the point. Trump is the president of the United States. There is now ample evidence that a very serious accusation he made about a former president is simply not true. Standing by it now is simply irresponsible.

Chris Cillizza

Washington, D.C.

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