More on that FISA tweet SNAFU

Up for reauthorization is a part of the [FISA] law that allows the intelligence agencies to vacuum up data on foreigners from internet companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft — without an individualized warrant. The eavesdropping is overseen by a secret court.

[...]

[After Trump's early morning tweet suggesting the FISA bill amendment should not be reauthorized] Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and White House counter terrorism adviser Tom Bossert were involved, and House Speaker Paul Ryan got on the phone with Trump himself, according to multiple government officials familiar with what happened.

Despite an angry denial from White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders that Trump was in any way confused, his actions left White House and intelligence officials shaking their heads, given that they put at risk a program that the spy agencies rely on to track terrorists, weapons proliferation and foreign adversaries.

[...]

"When the history of President Donald Trump's use of Twitter is written, there will be a stiff competition for his most destructive, most irresponsible tweet, wrote Susan Hennessey, a former lawyer at the National Security Agency. This one, she said, will be a strong contender.

One thing that mystified senior intelligence officials, they said, was that Trump had been briefed on the FISA issue, and they believed he understood it. It was the top legislative priority of the intelligence agencies.

  NBC

They thought he understood. How did they determine that? Did they ask him to, in his own words, explain it to them? Even if he could, the problem would still have been that he watched Fox News the next morning where he was told the law had been used against him.

Fox's Napolitano, a former judge, is the same pundit whose unsupported assertions about surveillance appeared to have led Trump to proclaim last March that he had been wiretapped in Trump Tower. He reportedly was suspended by Fox News over his unsupported claim that a British intelligence agency helped the Obama administration spy on candidate Trump. But he was back on the air Thursday.

[...]

"I don't understand why Donald Trump is in favor of this," Napolitano said. "His woes began with unlawful foreign surveillance and unconstitutional domestic surveillance of him, before he was the president of the United States, and now he wants to institutionalize this."

And immediately, the Trump tweet.

"'House votes on controversial FISA ACT today,'" he wrote on Twitter. "This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?"

On the Hill, lawmakers were stunned. Rep. Peter King, Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee's counterterrorism subcommittee, told NBC News that Trump was obviously mistaken.

[...]

The ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, said on Twitter: " [...] FISA is something the President should have known about long before he turned on Fox this morning."

Apparently, the GOP members thought he did.  What we now know is that Fox News is running the country.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.