{"id":226,"date":"2017-03-06T20:06:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T01:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.secondordereffects.com\/?p=226"},"modified":"2017-03-06T21:02:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T02:02:47","slug":"the-effect-of-president-trumps-latest-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secondordereffects.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/06\/the-effect-of-president-trumps-latest-tweet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Effect of President Trump’s Latest Tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Trump’s latest tweet may be a trap the press glibly ran into this week. \u00a0On Mar 4, 2017 the President tweeted the following:<\/p>\n

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This tweet has had the immediate effect of having the press run out and demand proof that his phones had been tapped. \u00a0President 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. \u00a0The legal process doesn’t allow the President to personally ask for a phone to be tapped.<\/p>\n

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The issue with the tweet “that President Obama didn’t order any wiretaps of Donald Trump”. \u00a0This 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. \u00a0To this Kevin Lewis, Former President Obama’s spoke person stated the following:<\/p>\n

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“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.”<\/p>\n

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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. \u00a0Since 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? \u00a0Many would suspect that there were wiretaps and that would leave open the door for the next shoe to drop. \u00a0And, this conjecture would keep the story alive but take the former President off the hook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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”.<\/p>\n

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The biggest denial came from the Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.<\/p>\n