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President Trump has accused former President Obama of... something:
In a string of tweets posted early Saturday morning, President Trump let loose a barrage of accusations at his predecessor. He alleged that former President Obama had his "wires tapped" in Trump Tower before Election Day last year, accusing Obama of "McCarthyism" and being a "bad (or sick) guy."
Trump, who is under significant scrutiny for his administration's contacts with Russia before he took office, offered no evidence to support his claims Saturday morning. Neither the White House nor Obama's office has responded immediately to NPR's requests for comment.
[...] Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Also at WaPo, NYT, Reuters, Fox News, BBC, and Snopes, which hints that it may be related to this story.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06 2017, @12:20AM
NO ONE is hoping that. As someone else said, NO ONE wants the guy who can launch nuclear weapons or start an aggressive war to be an "insane imbecile."
To the contrary, I think everyone ravening merely because someone hasn't agreed that Trump is stupid and crazy is precisely that. They're emotionally invested in the story.
It's just like virtually all of of the story-telling arts. No one watches a Hamlet play because they hope this time, that Hamlet gets his act together in Act III, preventing the tragedy of the latter part of the play. No one watches action movies, hoping that the story works itself out without conflict and nobody gets hurt. We want stories of conflict, good versus evil, exciting explosions, and similar fare.
That's all fine until you start seeing those stories in mundane real life and treating it the same way.
What many people ARE concerned about and realize is that Trump has made a lot of political progress over the past two years by making outrageous claims and statements against his opponents. He has one primary rhetorical strategy -- ad hominem. Don't talk about policy. Don't address your critics. Just ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK. If someone asks you a substantive question or brings up a serious issue with you, say something awful about your opponent: "I like people who don't get captured," "Stuff coming out of her... whatever..." etc. His whole campaign was launched on the idea that Mexico was sending rapists and other criminals to the U.S., despite the fact that there are no statistics showing that immigrants (legal OR illegal) are significantly more likely to commit crimes in the U.S. To the contrary, statistical analysis generally shows immigrants are slightly LESS likely to commit violent crimes (probably because they're scared of being caught and deported -- we DO actually deport people for violent crime).
Another story. I don't disagree that he does this. I do disagree that it's normally a successful strategy or is "ingenious". It isn't ingenious to have a weak opponent through happenstance.
Thus, given his history, when Trump makes an outrageous claim about Obama's past behavior, it's perfectly logical to assume he's just trying to get the media to stop talking as much about actual problems. He got a few hours of decent coverage after his speech earlier this past week, until the whole Sessions controversy erupted, and then it was all Sessions all the time for a few days. Trump needed to "change the story," so he folllowed his playbook -- make outrageous claim about Obama, and the media will spend a couple days trying to refute that, rather than continuing its drumbeat on potential Russian connections with his cabinet, etc. (I do have to say that I've been skeptical all along of the supposed Russian connections and claims of election interference, but the number of unnecessary contacts with Russian officials is now getting a bit weird.)
What is weird about it? There is considerable opportunity for shenanigans and message passing, but Russia is a big player and there's going to be a lot of contacts naturally.