The National Security Council, responsible for briefing Trump on matters of (what else, national security) has to tiptoe around Trump during its briefings.

There is an unspoken understanding within the NSC that to raise anything to do with Russia is to acknowledge its validity, which the president would see as an affront. Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy. So it is never addressed.

The people at the NSC who operate on this “unspoken understanding” should get out of intelligence work immediately.