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No Proof, No Proof, No Proof, Nunes … We Always Knew There Was Proof
One Week of White House Press Briefings.
Thursday 3/16 – No proof, so when are you going to apologize to Obama for accusing him of surveillance (a 30 second watch)?
Next presser, Monday 3/20 – No proof, so are you prepared to apologize to Obama for accusing him of surveillance (a 30 second watch)?
Tuesday 3/21 – No proof, so when are you going to prove there was surveillance (a 15 second watch)?
Minutes after Devin Nunes’ announcement… Wednesday 3/22/17 – We in the news already knew there was proof of surveillance (30 seconds).
Yes, they always knew, but pretended they didn’t for weeks. Who should apologize now?
Published in Journalism
I took some time to look at the polls tonight. We live in an era of government disapproval. Comparing them to previous decades may not be a reliable measure. Perhaps a better metric is a relative comparison. Your link show’s Trump’s approval at 40%. Well, that is twice the approval rate of Congress, which is a mere 20%.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html
I keep stumbling on these videos of experts saying Trump was right. Looks like it was made yesterday. Here is the Former House Intel committee chair Pete Hoekstra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7gBZ-hEMEs
No. Pete Hoekstra does not say that Trump is right. He is talking about the issue that Trump should have been talking about all along. I wish he had been saying that Trump was right because that would have met that Trump was on target with his accusations but he was not.
Here is the problem: Trump accusation is that Obama ordered surveillance on Trump and his team illegally or to be generous legally. Much as the Plumbers tried to tap the phones at Watergate.
This does not see to have happened.
The actual crime: Trump’s transition team was picked in routine surveillance and Obama partisans decided to leak the most damaging transcriptions and info they cold glean from the intel in what was most likely a crime though they will probably plead, if caught, poor judgement and incompetence.
Trump has not really hit on the real crime but instead made a wild accusation that was not true. That will now always be a defense. Like this:
Reporter: Well we know now that Democratic loyalists leaked classified intel for political reasons. Out security services were politicized by people in the Obama administration, don’t you think that is a serious crime, that all Americans should be worried about?
Democratic Rep: Yes it is and as so far as there has been criminal wrong doing the book should be thrown at the offenders. But what I think we need not lose in all this is that President Trump did not talk about a few rogue officials breaking the law. He said that Obama ordered that happened and we have no evidence of that. In fact the first official caught explicitly says she acted on her own. So what we have here is that a few officials in the Obama administration when rogue and broke the law but now we have the current, President making false accusation about his predecessor that is what is really dangerous.
Reporter: So Government corruption is a danger to all of us then? Are you saying it is worse now?
DR: Well, in the leaking case you have a few low level officials that became corrupt that is bad of course. But now we have a President that is leading in making false accusations. So yes in a way I would say it was worse.
The above conversation would not even be possible if Trump had been accurate and honest in his first tweets.
Got a question for you. Mere days before Obama left office, why did he alter the rules under Executive Order 12333 for “to make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to share unfiltered information about innocent people” ?
“Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” Said the King, then he said “I alter the rules, the locks on the royal swords are to be removed so they can be freely shared among those in my court.”
As I said above it would have wonderful for Trump to pursue this line with Obama. I think that would have been devastating. But he went another way unfortunately without thinking it through. I just wish he didn’t and had stuck with the crimes that actually took place.
I think we are on the same side, but getting lost in terms and phases. Good advise during the campaign and still good advice: Take Trump seriously, but not literally.
As President to be taken seriously you should be able to be understood literally. If I accuse the star pitcher on a baseball of team of murder I don’t get to claim to have been right because an assistant coach was guilty. I would have still accused an innocent man. It drives me a bit nuts when people say it was right to accuse the innocent pitcher because someone connected to the team was guilty.
Trump had evidence of a real crimes or at least abuse of power against his team. Instead of running with that evidence and jamming it down the Democrats throats he goes and makes a accusation with no evidence providing our enemies with a distractions and defense from for their real crimes. It was just not a smart move.
I keep coming across experts supporting Trump’s claim. Here is Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy and former CIA officer Col. Tony Shaffer. Interview given yesterday.
Again, the man says like all the experts that you quoted here that Trump claim is not true. That political appointees misused intelligence that they likely got legally and that by using it for political purposes they broke the law. A charge that Trump could have made but chose not to make. I wish he had made and kept the conversation focused on this like a laser blame, implying that Obama was guilty through numerous ways, but not directly saying he was guilty. Painting the entire Democrat party as a corrupt and abusive, demanding the democrats denounce the leaks, when they don’t calling the corrupt. That kind of thing. But that is not what he chose to do. Instead people that want to defend him have to go on show and due interviews where they say, “Yes, Trump was wrong in every particular of his tweets, nothing like he described really happened. Nevertheless, Trump is right that crimes were committed by political appointees that threaten our system.”
It would have been much better for Trump to have focused on what did happen instead of making reckless tweets that tie his defenders up in knots trying to defend him.
I love it. “Laser blame,” the ultimate political weapon.
Oops but at least my mistake was funny!