From Media Matters
"You should be talking to Fox, OK?" President Donald Trump, March 17, 2017.
Monday's House Intelligence Committee hearing delivered a trifecta of bad news for President Donald Trump.
FBI Director James Comey confirmed the bureau is investigating whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during last year's election.
Comey confirmed that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice has any evidence to support Trump's wayward tweets that claimed former President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower.
And thirdly, the White House's wholly unsubstantiated claim that British intelligence had wiretapped Trump at Obama's request was completely undercut by National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers. "That would be expressly against the construct of the Five Eyes agreement that has been in place for decades," he said, referencing a decades-old agreement that the U.S. has with Britain and other allies "who share virtually all intelligence -- and pledge not to practice their craft on one another."
The highly anticipated hearing represented an across-the-board public debunking of Trump. But does the president even care?
Trump might not, simply because he's shown himself to be allergic to facts. He's quickly constructed his own alternate reality within the White House and increasingly relies not on U.S. intelligence for guidance, information, and raw data, but instead gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, and talk radio, among others.
It was a Breitbart article about a right-wing radio rant that sparked Trump's initial fantastic claim about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. And it was subsequent baseless speculation on Fox News that prompted the White House to push the ridiculous notion that Obama teamed up with the British to undermine Trump.
Tumbling down a rabbit hole filled with baseless conspiracy theories -- and desperately trying to grab onto any stray root to bolster his case -- Trump has replaced rational discourse with debunked assertions. And he's trying to lead America into the same dark cavern of misinformation where facts are unknowable and the truth represents a constant mirage.