One takeaway: The president really needs to come up with some new nicknames.
Coming perilously close to recycling his nickname for Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Corker, President Trump attacked Democratic representative Adam Schiff on Twitter Monday morning, kicking off the week with some good old-fashioned Russia-investigation paranoia.
Judging by his well-known TV-watching proclivities and a telltale earlier-morning tweet, there is a strong chance that the president was inspired to jot down his thoughts by his favorite program, Fox & Friends. The unconfirmed accusation that Schiff leaks information during meetings was repeated by Donald Trump Jr. in an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Saturday night.
Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is one of the most outspoken members of Congress and a frequent Trump critic. He was incensed when Republicans on the committee voted last week to release the Devin Nunes memo, which purported to show an explosive pattern of anti-Trump behavior by the FBI, but which turned out to be a dud.
When Republicans voted to disclose that document, they also decided, conveniently enough, that a Democratic rebuttal to it should not be made public .
But another vote on whether to make the Democratic response public is expected on Monday, and it’s doubtful that Trump’s attacks will help the Republican case to keep their counterparts’ work under wraps.
Taking a step back: The president accused one of his political opponents of a criminal act that could, in theory, be investigated by his Department of Justice. But such tinpot-dictator tactics have become so unremarkable, at this point, that they generate no more than a shrug.
Schiff quickly responded to Trump’s provocations:
