But the sad thing is that we need a reliable media and opposition party.
Pre-March 5 - Democrats say "Transcripts of spying show Trump is a Russian agent."
March 5 - Democrats were spying on me.
After March 5 - Never mind that part about proof.
Trump's ability to move the Overton Window is astounding.
And an essay about the collapse of the narrative.
//In short, the media and Democrats have been playing with fire for months. The use of law-enforcement and national-security assets to investigate one’s political opponents during a heated election campaign has always been a potentially explosive story. Let’s not kid ourselves: If the roles were reversed, and a Republican administration had investigated officials tied to the campaign of the Democrats’ nominee, we would be drowning in a sea of Watergate 2.0 coverage.
Well, this weekend, the potentially explosive story detonated. It happened in the now familiar way: jaw-dropping tweets by President Trump.
Given the abundance of indications that the Obama Justice Department scrutinized his campaign, or at least his associates, it was odd that the president chose to tweet the one allegation in the whole mess that appears insupportable — viz., that President Obama had had candidate Trump wiretapped. To my knowledge, no such suggestion has ever been publicly reported. At most, it has been reported (but not proved) that there was a FISA application in June that “named Trump” – but, as I’ve pointed out, saying someone was named in an application does not mean that person was targeted for eavesdropping. And, in any event, the reporting tells us that if there was such an application, the FISA court denied it. Thus, I know of no basis to believe that Trump himself was wiretapped; and if the president’s objective was to sensationalize the story, it would surely have been enough to tweet out a colorable fear that surveillance of him — as a Russian agent — had been proposed.
But was the overstatement slyly intentional? Was Trump trying to make a point?
Maybe not. It is certainly possible that the president was angry and the tweets result from a fit of pique. On the other hand, though, how much crazier is it for Trump to contend that Obama ordered spying on Trump than for the media and Democrats to have contended, for month upon month, that Trump’s campaign conspired with the Putin regime to steal the American presidential election and turn the Oval Office into occupied Kremlin territory?
It is probable that both allegations are ludicrous. There is a good case, though, that there’s more support for the former than the latter.
Here’s the most interesting part: Now that they’ve been called on it, the media and Democrats are gradually retreating from the investigation they’ve been touting for months as the glue for their conspiracy theory. It’s actually quite amusing to watch: How dare you suggest President Obama would ever order surveillance! Who said anything about FISA orders? What evidence do you lunatic conservatives have — uh, other than what we media professionals been reporting — that there was any investigation of the Trump campaign?//
The pattern seems to be. Media runs standard narrative. Trump points out obvious truth. Within a day, Swedish Muslims riot or something else happens that confirms Trump's "outrageous" statement.
Maybe it is just that Trump see the world as it is, without the ideological filters that the media has been imposing for 60 years?
Tuesday, March 07, 2017
Labels:
Politics 2017 - Obamagate
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1 comment:
It sounds like you'd support a special processor to clear this all up. Given the consensus within the intelligence community is that Russia was behind the hack of DNC and individuals' email accounts eventually provide to Wikileaks, seems like a good thing to get to the bottom of and retaliate accordingly. Go ahead and throw in review of Trump campaign contacts with Russia / Russians and collusion on email issue (if any) and the accusation that Obama personally ordered or had ordered or knew about illegal wiretaps of Trump, Trump campaign, or Trump tower. Let's lay it all bare.
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