The Trump White House’s contempt for the press—and for the more general notion that there are inconvenient truths in the world that can’t be denied out of existence—is so well established by now that many of us who cover politics have become desensitized to its constant manifestations.

But sometimes, the administration’s dissembling is so egregious that it can’t be laughed off, such as on Monday when White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revised the history of the Trump campaign, transition, and the early days of the administration to write central characters into trivial roles.

At his daily briefing, Spicer referred to now-deposed national security adviser Michael Flynn as a “volunteer of the campaign” and Paul Manafort—who was Trump’s campaign manager—as someone “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

Spicer: Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort played a "very limited" role for a "very limited period of time." https://t.co/q3gqLwbrqb — CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2017

As Spicer spoke, FBI Director James Comey was testifying on Capitol Hill, where he both disputed Trump’s claim that he was unlawfully wiretapped last year by President Barack Obama and confirmed that the FBI is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts … includ[ing] an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”



It is hard to say, exactly, how a presidential administration should behave when it has been the beneficiary, wittingly or unwittingly, of foreign interference on its behalf. The U.S. intelligence community has already concluded that the Russian government sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign to bolster Trump’s candidacy. Even under the most innocent of circumstances, Trump and his senior aides would find themselves in the awkward position of having to contend with the role that dirty tricks played in their rise to political power.