{"id":298075,"date":"2017-03-08T08:15:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T07:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/from-the-mixed-up-files-of-mr-donald-j-trump\/"},"modified":"2017-03-08T08:15:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T07:15:03","slug":"from-the-mixed-up-files-of-mr-donald-j-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/from-the-mixed-up-files-of-mr-donald-j-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Donald J. Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Assume for a moment, as many have suggested, that the whole Trump\/Putin\/Russia calamity is a deliberate distraction, a deflection to shift our gaze from the destruction of government and democratic principles that Trump, Bannon and their cohort \u2014 aided and abetted by a compliant Congress \u2014 seem intent on implementing.<\/p>\n

What then to make of this weekend\u2019s flurry of tweets from our commander-in-chief, first bellowing<\/a> that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in Manhattan and then demanding a congressional investigation<\/a>? A distraction from a distraction? Or worse?<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper succinctly summed it up in a Sunday morning tweet of his own:<\/p>\n

\n

POTUS makes wild accusation w\/zero evidence
WH searches for evidence & cant find any
WH tells Congress to find evidence\/no further comment<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 5, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a classic authoritarian move: Make up a baseless charge and then demand that a loyal someone else \u2014 in this case the recumbent Republican Congress \u2014 prove it for you. But regardless of what they do or don\u2019t find, you\u2019ve successfully hurled your accusations into view and it will be hard to get them out of the public\u2019s mind. Like Benghazi.<\/p>\n

As of this writing, the latest major advance of the story came Sunday afternoon, when The New York Times<\/em> broke the news<\/a> that FBI Director James Comey \u201casked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump\u2019s assertion that President Barack Obama<\/a> ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump\u2019s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a separate editorial, the Times<\/em> warned<\/a>, \u201cThis is a dangerous moment, which requires Congress and members of this administration to look beyond partisan maneuvering and tend to the health of the democracy itself.\u201d Dream on \u2014 as one of my Texas aunts used to say, wishing ain\u2019t getting. The White House and congressional Republicans care about as much about the health of democracy as they do the health of the millions of poor and middle-class people who will be flattened by four years of craven social and economic policy. Just look at their new repeal-and-replace Obamacare<\/a> plan.<\/p>\n

Besides, Comey is wrong \u2014 we know this because the sycophantic Kellyanne Conway says so. Trump is the president of the United States, she proclaimed on Fox and Friends<\/em> Monday morning<\/a>, and because of that, \u201cHe has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not.\u201d So there.<\/p>\n

Down the rabbit hole we go, burrowing deeper and deeper through the twists and turns of Trump\u2019s troubled mind. Why this latest blowup? As Karen Tumulty notes in The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, \u201cWhen he wants to change a subject, he often does it by touching a match to the dry tinder of a sketchy conspiracy theory.\u201d\u00a0Or is this simply a mad flailing about from a president who realizes he\u2019s in trouble not only over Russia but desperately in over his head about almost everything else too? For the most part, his promises are backed by nothing; he has no real solutions or legislative programs and hundreds of government positions needed to run the country remain unfilled.<\/p>\n

(One highly notable, troubling exception: On Sunday, Eric Lipton and Binyamin Appelbaum of The Times<\/em> reported<\/a> on<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2026 More than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office\u2026 one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades\u2026 In many cases, records show<\/a> that the changes came after appeals by corporate lobbyists and trade association executives, who see a potentially historic opportunity to lower compliance costs and drive up profits.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When confronted, Trump\u2019s childish answer always is to run off off to Twitter to change the subject or to blame someone else for his troubles, usually the intelligence community and \u201cfake news,\u201d but now it\u2019s Barack Obama himself. Everybody\u2019s out to get him, Trump thinks, conspiring to undermine and delegitimize his most amazing presidency ever.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re really in the market for a reasonable conspiracy theory, how about this: By all accounts, Trump\u2019s hyperventilated, weekend Twitter attacks on Obama were triggered not by actual evidence but by a Friday morning article on the Breitbart News<\/em> website, which in turn was based, in part at least, on rantings the previous day from right-wing radio host Mark Levin. He contends that the Trump\/Russia controversy and Attorney General Jeff Sessions\u2019 recusal from any investigation of it are just smokescreens hiding nefarious acts by Obama meant to bring Trump down.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s really nothing new in the accusations that Trump\u2019s predecessor and\/or \u201cthe deep state\u201d were out to get him via wiretaps or other forms of surveillance; they go back to at least last fall when an article by Louise Mensch<\/a> appeared on the conservative Heat Street<\/em> website (Heat Street<\/em> is owned by Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp.) and subsequent internet pieces from The Guardian<\/em> and the BBC. From these and other sources \u2014 including The New York Times<\/em> and The Washington Post<\/em> \u2014 seem to have come the Levin tirade and Breitbart News<\/em> piece but in a form manipulated to create the most sinister insinuation possible.<\/p>\n

At the Just Security<\/em> website, based at New York University School of Law, Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez took a close look<\/a> at the Heat Street<\/em>, Guardian<\/em> and BBC articles. He points out, \u201c[T]here\u2019s nothing here to suggest either the direct involvement of President Obama nor any clear indication of a violation of the law\u2026 it might behoove the commander in chief to refrain from issuing serious and inflammatory accusations based wholly on \u2018intelligence\u2019 gleaned from Breitbart News<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalist Marcy Wheeler, an expert on national security and civil liberties, agrees. The prior reporting, which involves Russian banks, email and a spam marketing server \u2014 not the wiretapping of telephones, by the way \u2014 reflects a certain lack of knowledge of how law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the courts work, not to mention a lethal dose of sheer speculation. In a comprehensive, important review of the evidence at her EmptyWheel<\/em> website<\/a>, she writes:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cTrump hasn\u2019t been bugged. It\u2019s quite likely a number of Trump\u2019s close associates are,\u00a0after incriminating information showed up about or involving them on other wiretaps. There\u2019s zero reason to believe Obama ordered them, not least because everyone involved believed Obama was responding too nonchalantly to the Russian accusations.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s associates are bugged, to the extent one or more of them are directly targeted rather than being collected incidentally, because they\u2019re suspected of being Russian assets.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Breitbart<\/em> article<\/a>, breathing heavily as it summarized Levin\u2019s charges of a \u201csilent\u201d Obama coup, was written by Joel B. Pollak, the website\u2019s senior editor-at-large and author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution<\/a><\/em>. He worked with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon when Bannon ran Brietbart.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to wonder: Did Bannon push Pollak and Breitbart<\/em> to run the story \u2014 much as the Bush White House and Pentagon fed Judith Miller at The New York Times<\/em> false accounts of Iraq\u2019s \u201cweapons of mass destruction,\u201d then cited her reporting as proof that they were right?<\/p>\n

Or did Bannon simply make sure Pollak\u2019s Breitbart<\/em> story was near the top of that well-known pile of printed out articles Trump looks at in the morning, count to 10 and wait for the presidential tantrum he was sure would erupt? Of all people, Bannon knows Trump has a track record of regurgitating fabricated nonsense that he hears and reads on right-wing media.<\/p>\n

Speculation, of course. And a distraction, absolutely. Because there\u2019s another deep state. It isn\u2019t the corporate-government underground complex secretly running things but the deep, deep state of trouble we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not just because of any skullduggery by Russia, although it\u2019s clearer than ever that a special prosecutor or independent investigation is an absolute must. No, we\u2019re being run straight off the cliff by a homegrown confederacy of dunces. And an intemperate, dangerous little child shall lead them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assume for a moment, as many have suggested, that the whole Trump\/Putin\/Russia calamity is a deliberate distraction, a deflection to shift our gaze from the destruction of government and democratic principles that Trump, Bannon and their cohort \u2014 aided and abetted by a compliant Congress \u2014 seem intent on implementing. What then to make of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}