Your microwave probably isn't spying on you. But your fridge and TV might be.

Stop snickering. President Trump and Kellyanne Conway are actually largely right about government spying.

If only bad reception was the problem.
(Image credit: Allan Swart / Alamy Stock Photo)

When President Trump accused former President Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones in Trump Tower in the run-up to the 2016 election, the eye-rolling began immediately. Trump is the "conspiracy-theory president," after all, and here he was at it once again, serving up wild nonsense to the slavering masses without a lick of evidence beyond the apparent influence of a sketchy Breitbart timeline cobbled together in service of a talk radio host's murky ramblings.

As the din of demands for evidence grew louder, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway waded into the fray without her usual Midas touch of spin. Conceding that she hadn't seen proof Trump's phones were tapped, Conway nonetheless protested that "there are many ways to surveil each other."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.