“Increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there,” Obama said.

He continued: “Without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, then we're going to keep talking past each other.”

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Less than 12 hours later, Trump showed that he's not exactly heeding Obama's advice.

While responding to the big report that he was briefed on unconfirmed intelligence suggesting that Russia might have compromising information about him, Trump chose to cite a source of dubious stature and motivation: the Kremlin.

This came just days after Trump cited another problematic source: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Trump referred to Assange's claim that the information hacked from Democrats wasn't provided to him by Russia.

I won't dwell too much here on why the Kremlin and Assange aren't the most credible — or at least the most unbiased — sources. Suffice it to say that they both have an interest in casting doubt upon the intelligence — Assange because it makes him look like Russia's stooge, and Russia because admitting you have compromising information on an American president kind of defeats the purpose of having that compromising information.

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Trump's reaction to the original reporting on the belief of some in the intelligence community that Russia had attempted to influence the election because they preferred his victory, of course, struck a sharply different note: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

It's worth noting precisely where we are at here. Basically, Trump is hugely skeptical of the consensus conclusions of the American intelligence community, but he's happy to cite two sources whose motivations are decidedly not pro-American. He seems to accept their claims uncritically in a way he simply doesn't with the information from this country's intelligence sources.

In context, it's not hugely surprising. Trump is a conspiracy theorist who has often relied upon dubious news sources for his information. It's documented. But while those sources might have bad information — even purposefully so to stir controversy or generate clicks — the Kremlin and Assange have clearly proven to be antagonistic toward the United States. The default with such sources is usually to have the kind of default skepticism that Trump is applying only to U.S. intelligence.

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Trump insisted after his Assange tweets last week that he wasn't saying he agreed with Assange. And he'll probably say the same thing about citing the Kremlin.