Sen. John McCain saw shades of dystopia during a hearing Wednesday.

The Arizona Republican said that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' refusal to go into detail about a conversation already reported in The Washington Post "shows what kind of an Orwellian existence that we live in."

"I mean, it's detailed, as you know from reading the story, when you met, what you discussed, et cetera, et cetera . And yet, here in a public hearing before the American people, we can't talk about what was described in detail in this morning's Washington Post," McCain asked at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

In the late 1940s, British author George Orwell wrote "1984," in which people use a government-issued language called " newspeak " that's designed to limit freedom of thought.

The Post reported that Coats told associates that Trump asked him whether he could persuade former FBI Director James Comey to ease off an investigation into the former national security advisor. The advisor, Michael Flynn, was fired for lying about his links to Moscow.