Former national security adviser Susan Rice says President Trump must improve his administration’s commitment to the truth or risk harming the nation’s credibility.
“First impressions matter, and an unsettling pattern has already emerged,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.
“Still, it is possible to mitigate the long-term effects of this vacation from veracity – if the White House and the president quickly and convincingly return to the tradition of endeavoring to tell the truth from the Oval Office and the White House briefing room,” added Rice, who also served as former President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations.
{mosads}“If they do not, one is left to wonder whether the damage inflicted on U.S. global leadership is the deliberate derivative of the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’ or simply the lasting consequence of compulsive mendacity. Either way, the United States’ national security will suffer.”
Trump tweeted earlier this month — without evidence — that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in New York City during the 2016 presidential campaign.
FBI Director James Comey said Monday at a hearing on Capitol Hill that the Department of Justice has “no information” to support Trump’s allegation.
Trump has stood by the claims despite calls from Democrats and some Republicans to apologize, while the White House has said the president was referring to surveillance methods more broadly.