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Early on in "Fiddler on the Roof," Yente the Matchmaker tries to sell a villager on Rachel, the shoemaker's daughter, as a suitable wife for his son. "Rachel?" the man responds incredulously. "But she can hardly see! She's almost blind!"

"Tell me the truth, Avram," Yente parries, unperturbed. "Is your son so much to look at? The way she sees, and the way he looks -- it's a perfect match."

It came to mind after the press conference called last week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for the purpose of leveling patently bogus accusations of "treason" against former President Barack Obama and the intelligence agencies that unanimously assessed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump win it. Gabbard's performance was at once pathetic and dangerous, demagoguery rivaling Joe McCarthy's fraudulent claim in February 1950 that he held in his hands a list of 205 State Department employees "known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party."

There was no such list. There were no such employees. The cocky assertion was garbage, but it catapulted McCarthy to a position that enabled him to terrorize Americans and effectively hold the country hostage for the next four years.

Gabbard proclaimed that "at President Trump's direction" she was "releasing" a House Committee report written by Republican staffers five years ago, which, she professed, contained "stunning revelations" that "should be of concern to every American," to wit, supposedly "irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false."

Obama and the intelligence leadership, Gabbard actually claimed, "conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump" by "promot(ing) a contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win." According to Gabbard, there was a massive conspiracy to falsely conclude that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, all in order to launch a "coup" against the incoming president. And as long as she was making stuff up, Gabbard and whoever wrote this for her figured they may as well go The Full Loch Ness Monster, referring the "case" to an obedient Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate a "treasonous conspiracy."

Small problem.

As one expects from anything said or ordered up by a president who has not an atomic particle of credibility, Gabbard was full of it. Obama had not "directed" that any "false" conclusion be generated. The unanimous conclusion by all of the intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election wasn't false. And nothing "released" by Gabbard indicated otherwise.

Apart from that, Gabbard's presentation was problem-free.

Trump's own former national security adviser, who would have had access to any "evidence" that refuted the intelligence community's findings, was succinct about Gabbard. "She's imagined evidence that doesn't exist," John Bolton said. "(Her accusation) collapses pretty quickly. ... There is, in substance, nothing to it."

The CIA official who oversaw the analysis that Gabbard claims was "contrived" states flatly that Gabbard and the Trump White House "are lying, again." "We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected," retired CIA officer Susan Miller told NBC.

And Gabbard mumbled and stumbled when asked about the fact that the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by then Sen. Marco Rubio, now Trump's Secretary of State, conducted its own two-year investigation and concluded precisely the same thing. "As far as the general theme of Russia's interference, the president's said he doesn't believe it," said then-Sen. Rubio. "I believe it, and not only do I believe it, I know it. Almost everyone else does ... All I can tell you is that Russia most certainly tried to interfere with our election."

Trump needed someone to do his bidding and dust off his phony claim that the findings that Russia interfered to elect him were a "hoax," especially in the middle of his Jeffrey Epstein problem -- which, naturally, he also calls a hoax. Gabbard needs to do Trump's bidding in order to attempt to climb back into his good graces, having gotten into serious hot water with him on the issue of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons.

To quote Yente the Matchmaker: It's a perfect match.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate Inc.