CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HAS IT that people vote on their stomachs, and it’s a certainty that the economy, and especially inflation, will be foremost in many minds when millions of Americans sit down and turn on their TVs for the first Trump-Biden debate on June 27.
But we can also expect U.S. intelligence to emerge as a bean bag in the debates, given Donald Trump’s years-long attacks on it, especially the FBI and CIA, as entrenched agents of a “deep state” out to get him—and by extension, his enraptured followers. For his part, President Biden will have a challenge in defending his spy agencies beyond the usual bromides, given their failure to anticipate Hamas’ attacks, stop the infiltration of foreign terrorist across the southern border, and controversial advocacy of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the government to hoover up the communications of U.S.persons without a warrant if they’re in contact with the target of a national security investigation.
Trump has falsely claimed that the FBI “spied on” his campaign (it was looking for evidence that Russian agents were infiltrating it—a big difference), but revelations that an FBI lawyer falsified a document in an FISA warrant request related to one of his campaign aides gave him enough ammo to make the charge stick, at least to his followers. Last month he claimed the FBI was authorized to assassinate him, which prompted Special Counsel Jack Smith to beg U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, overseeing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case, to gag him. Cannon denied the request, leaving Trump free to attack the FBI again on stage in Atlanta, site of the first debate.
Trump has reason to believe even the most outlandish claims against the FBI, and U.S. intelligence in general, will find a receptive audience.