Trump’s Wiretap Accusations Renew Debate About Privacy

Even if President Trump’s wiretap claim was groundless, as seems all but certain, it has unexpectedly renewed a debate on the left as well as the right over whether security agencies invade Americans’ privacy and could undermine democracy.

Whether the president intended such a discussion or even welcomes it, his repeated undercutting of the spy agencies has been striking. Some of his vocal critics believe that the wiretap gambit is a deliberate attempt to create a distraction from the many challenges facing his young presidency. It could also be that by pre-emptively discrediting the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, he is hoping to undermine any damning evidence they may produce of his associates’ contacts with Russia. In the domestic sphere, after all, he and his aides denigrated the Congressional Budget Office in anticipation of the office’s dismal projections on his health plan. Or possibly the president’s repeated battering of the intelligence agencies is not so different from his attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department. He may view the spy agencies as just additional targets in what his adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”