Opinion: 'He works for the president'

View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Friday, March 31, 2017 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( A gaffe in politics, Michael Kinsley [famously said]( happens when someone inadvertently tells the truth. And Ted Yoho, a Republican congressman from northern Florida, made a doozy of a gaffe on MSNBC yesterday. Yoho was trying to defend Devin Nunes — the head of the House Intelligence Committee who has shown no interest in investigating President Trump’s Russia ties — when he said the following: “You gotta keep in mind who he works for. He works for the president. He answers to the president.” Indeed, he does. Yesterday, The Times [broke the story]( that two White House staff members spoon-fed Nunes some intelligence designed to make Trump look good. Nunes then went before television cameras last week and made the information sound as if it had come from an independent source. The speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, backed up Nunes, [saying on CBS]( that “he had told me that like, a whistleblower-type person had given him some information that was new.” Likewise, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, [said]( that the idea Nunes’s information came from the White House “doesn’t really pass the smell test.” It now appears Ryan and Spicer were either ignorant of the truth or deliberately trying to mislead. It’s becoming [a pattern]( isn’t it? I have come to expect this White House to mislead people whenever it feels like it. But watching Republicans in Congress play along is deeply dispiriting. They are members of a branch of government that the Constitution has enshrined as coequal, yet too many Congressional Republicans are acting like members of White House staff. Here’s hoping, once again, that some Senate Republicans are more principled and patriotic, as well as more respectful of the institution of Congress. And, yes, Yoho completed the process of committing a Kinsleyesque gaffe later yesterday when a spokesman [claimed]( he “misspoke” by saying that Nunes worked for the president. Elsewhere, for those trying to understand Brexit, I recommend Lianna Brinded’s succinct [explanation]( in Business Insider of how Germany will try to make the process painful. The Germans want other countries to know the high price of exit — rightly, in my view. Finally, I wanted to correct two things from yesterday’s newsletter. I mistakenly described [a Virginia Senate poll]( as being done by The Washington Post; it was done by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. And I described Tom Perriello’s former Congressional district as being in Appalachia, but much more of it is in the Piedmont region. The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Domingo Martinez on [the new reality of life along the border](. 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