Credibility Acid

Donald Trump has a kind of universal credibility acid which dissolves the credibility of anybody associated with him. Tillerson and McMaster were supposed to be the adults in the room who would restrain Trump's worst impulses, but both found themselves releasing lawyerly statement denying that Trump discussed "sources and methods" with the Russians, and claiming that that demonstrated that the stories in the Washington Post and elsewhere were therefore false. Today, their credibility lies in tatters, since those stories made no such claim. Instead, they reported that the details released, in the opinion of intelligence professionals, allowed the deduction of sources and methods, implying major clues to the identity of inside informants.

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