Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I'm out of free visits.

Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes http://wapo.st/2npSMq6

Link to tweet

Aaron Blake: @AaronBlake

Senior political reporter on The Fix at The Washington Post. RTs should be taken seriously, not literally.

Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes

[mercuryblues]

1. It pretty much

says Nunes and Graham are telling the trump cabal to put up or shut up about Obama tapp.

Nunes is threatening to subpoena the DoJ and Graham is threatening to call for a joint select committee to look into the outrageous claims by trump.

[Lucinda]

2. The last four paragraphs:

"...The White House's reactions to Trump's evidence-free claims — be it this one or the one about millions of illegal votes in 2016 — is to call for investigations. That has the triple benefit of putting the onus on someone else to look into it, to buy some time and hope people forget that the president is making such wild allegations, and, in this case, to give themselves an excuse to clam up. The White House initially said it wouldn't comment on Trump's wiretapping claim while it was being investigated and then it said it couldn't provide evidence because of separation of powers — another claim that strained credulity.

But that also puts Republicans such as Nunes and Graham in the position of having to account for these claims — and calling on Trump and his team to put up or shut up. By pushing the administration to produce evidence — or else — they are effectively putting the ball back in the executive branch's court. The subtext: You can't just make these claims and then ask us to deal with the fallout.

Nunes in particular has faced some very tough questions from reporters, and he must feel as though he's being hung out to dry. Graham's angle is slightly different, in that he clearly doesn't think Trump's claim is accurate and wants to prove it. “If there is no warrant, then we’ll have solved this problem: There was no wiretapping,” he said this week.

Whether this will actually give Trump any pause in the future when making such allegations is an open question. But these members want to make sure he and the people around him at least think twice before saddling them and their GOP colleagues with another evidence-free Trump claim."

[gratuitous]

3. Wake me when they do something besides talk tough

For now, I'm the column labeled "Unimpressed."