An Embarrassment

I was rivited by those hearings yesterday. Sally Yates and James Clapper did a great job fielding the questions from the Senate. I thought the Republican members who were more concerned about leaks and unmasking looked small when they asked those questions, considering the gravity of the underlying reason for the hearing. They didn't seem concerned at all about how to prevent this in the future, despite the clarion call from the witnesses that it will happen again in 2018 and 2020.

Former DNI Clapper urged that the #1 thing we need to do to prevent this hacking from happening again was to educate the public.

But at the very moment he was saying that, our president was doing the exact opposite on Twitter. He was accusing the witnesses of leaking (without any evidence...the president of the friggin USA was doing this), and he was calling real news "Fake News".

Media experts from around the world say we have media institutions that are the envy of the world. Everytime the president says that the mainstream media is "fake news" we diminish those institutions. They have protected us for more than two hundred years. They are a check and balance on outside influence, and inside corruption. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the nightly network newscasts...that's the real news. You may not like what they are saying, but they are saying the truth, as best as they can ascertain it. When they are wrong, they correct their mistakes.

Right now our president is a worldwide embarrassment.