Second Order Effects President Trump’s latest tweet may be a trap the press glibly ran into this week. On Mar 4, 2017 the President tweeted the following:
This tweet has had the immediate effect of having the press run out and demand proof that his phones had been tapped. President Trump needs to be a little more careful, the fact that the President can’t order a wiretap is something most in the press would jump on and did. The legal process doesn’t allow the President to personally ask for a phone to be tapped.
The issue with the tweet “that President Obama didn’t order any wiretaps of Donald Trump”. This appears to be where all of the denials related to wire taps centered, at least initially, that the president didn’t order any wiretaps of any US Citizen. To this Kevin Lewis, Former President Obama’s spoke person stated the following:
“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Notice that this carefully crafted statement doesn’t say that there weren’t any wiretaps, it just says that the President didn’t order any. Since it isn’t legal for the President to order wiretaps, this is a reasonable statement but it doesn’t get to the point, was anyone wiretapping Candidate Trump? Many would suspect that there were wiretaps and that would leave open the door for the next shoe to drop. And, this conjecture would keep the story alive but take the former President off the hook.
Since the tweet, the press has dragged out many members of the previous administration and they have all said, “no not me, nor my agency; we didn’t ask for nor get a warrant to listen to Donald Trump’s phones”.
The biggest denial came from the Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
The former DNI James Clapper said that there were no wiretaps of the Trump campaign. He was asked, if the FBI got a FISA Warrant would you know about, he said “I would hope so”. But the big bomb shell for Chuck Todd was when Director Clapper said that the investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian Agents by the FBI, CIA, and NSA; found no evidence of collusion. The “NO COLLUSION” part of the story has been out for months as well, but for some reason keeps getting lost.
Here is where things go array for the press. For the last year, the press has been beating up on Mr./President Trump about colluding with the Russians. This constant drum beat of stories from leakers within the Federal Government has been a constant stream of distractions from getting things done. Mark Levin goes through the constant array of accusations from the press over the last year in the following:
The second order effect:
The press, in it’s zeal to defend Former President Obama, may have completely undercut their narrative that President Trump colluded with the Russians to beat Ms. Clinton! No one would have gotten the former DNI on air to say there were no wire tapes without President Trump’s Tweet. The real bomb shell in this is that Former DNI Clapper said that they couldn’t find any evidence of collusion between Trump (or his staff) and the Russians. So, the list of stories that Mark Levin went through above has to be FAKE NEWS. The press couldn’t help themselves, they had to defend former President Obama.
Could this have been the President’s plan all along, to sow disbelief in the news media and to show they are spreading FAKE NEWS?