Trump Administration Sought To Enlist Intelligence Officials, Key Lawmakers, To Counter Russia Stories

The Trump White House is starting to sound like Lord of the Flies* inside Thunderdome.

   Does anybody have a good fix on WTH is going on?

   If everything the admin is saying about it is true, then they were just trying to get people to say publicly what they'd said in private--that the stories were overblown. So that's the best case scenario. Right?

   How bad is that? I do not know...but still not great, right?

   Is there any reason to believe that they're telling the truth? 

   Well...not exactly none perhaps...but not exactly any either.

   I don't want to harp on the one case...but the crowd-size case isn't just one case--it's a telling/representative case that basically set the tone for the current insanity...so here's how I'll put it: 

The Trump "administration" has made it clear that it's willing to say that 500,000 = 1.5 million > 1.8 million.

   Basically, and not getting too precise about it: if you're willing to lie about that, you're willing to lie about anything.

   Or so it seems to me.

   I'm trying not to fall prey to the prevailing anti-Trump hysteria on the left. But I have to admit that it's not entirely clear to me how unjustified hysteria actually is at this point.