THE POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO DEFENSE:

By the afternoon the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, had systematically demolished his arguments in a remarkable public takedown of a sitting president. Even a close ally of Mr. Trump, Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the House Intelligence Committee chairman, conceded that "a gray cloud" of suspicion now hung over the White House by the end of the day's hearings. [...]

But it's the obsessiveness and ferocity of Mr. Trump's pushback against the Russian allegations, often untethered from fact or tact, that is making an uncertain situation worse. [...]

Over the past several weeks, Republicans in Congress and members of their staffs have privately complained that Mr. Trump's Twitter comment on March 4 -- the one where he called Barack Obama "sick" and suggested that the former president had ordered a "tapp" on his phone -- had done more to undermine anything he's done as president because it called into question his seriousness about governing.

The problem, from the perspective of Mr. Trump's beleaguered political fire brigade, is that the president insists on dealing with crises by creating new ones -- so surrogates, repeating talking points the president himself ignores, say they often feel like human shields.

Within the White House, a number of Mr. Trump's advisers -- including the press secretary, Sean Spicer, who has himself repeated unsubstantiated claims of British spying on Mr. Trump -- have told allies that Mr. Trump's Twitter habits are making their jobs harder, said administration officials interviewed over the past week.  [....]

People close to the president say Mr. Trump's Twitter torrent had less to do with fact, strategy or tactic than a sense of persecution bordering on faith: He simply believes that he was bugged in some way, by someone, and that evidence will soon appear to back him up.

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