This might be one of the better articles lately to help illustrate out how truly vapid, stupid and incoherent this man really is. What the fuck is he talking about in this interview? Holy fuck, what a moron! What a brain damaged woodchuck.....
Trump's defense of his wiretap
conspiracy theory goes horribly awry
Steve Benen
I've tried to keep an open mind
about Donald Trump's wiretap conspiracy theory. The idea that President Obama
ordered illegal surveillance of the then-Republican candidate obviously seems
ridiculous, but it's plausible to me that some members of Team Trump had
communications that were caught up in a legitimate, proper investigation.
But every time I try to take at
least part of the story seriously, Trump shares some thoughts on the matter,
which make his allegations sound crazy all over again. Last night, for example,
Fox News aired a new interview between
Tucker Carlson and the president.
CARLSON: On March 4th, 6:45 in
the morning, you are down in Florida, and you tweet, "The former
administration wiretapped me, surveilled me at Trump Tower during the last
election." How did you find out? You said "I just found out," how
did you learn that?
TRUMP: I had been reading about
things. I read in -- I think it was January 20th, a New York Times article
where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they
used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the
day previous, where he was talking about certain, very complex sets of things
happening, and wiretapping. I said "Wait a minute, there's a lot of
wiretapping being talked about." I have been seeing a lot of things.
New York Times mentioned wiretapping in
January, and Fox's Bret Baier mentioned it again more recently, but neither
report made any mention of Obama targeting Trump.
Also note Trump's vague
references to "things": he's read some "things," he's read
"other things," and he's "seeing a lot of things." This
wouldn't work for a child delivering a book report about a book he hasn't read,
and it sounds even worse when a president is defending accusations of an
illegal espionage operation.
The interview continued:
CARLSON: Why not wait to tweet
about it until you can prove it? Don't you devalue your words when you can't
provide evidence?
TRUMP: Well, because the New York
Times wrote about it. Not that I respect the New York Times. I call it the
failing New York Times. But they did write on January 20 using the word
"wiretap."
This isn't coherent. Why did
Trump share a conspiracy theory he couldn't prove? Because two months ago, a
newspaper he doesn't trust published a piece that offered literally no proof to
substantiate his conspiracy theory. Maybe the president didn't understand the
question.
This, however, was probably the
most striking exchange:
CARLSON: Right, but you are the
president. You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.
TRUMP: I do, I do, but I think
that frankly, we have a lot right now, and I think if you watch -- if you
watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying, and what he was talking about
and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you
could mention the name. He mentioned it, and other people mentioned it.
This is alarmingly nutty. For
months, Trump has looked past the official information
available to the president through his own administration,
preferring instead to rely on reports from news outlets he doesn't seem to
fully understand. In this case, Tucker Carlson tried to remind him that he has
access to real evidence that could tell him whether his conspiracy theories are
true or not, and Trump immediately responded by pointing to a Fox News report
-- which once again, did not in any way bolster his conspiracy theory.
Trump went on to say that
in his conspiracy-theory tweets, he put the word "wiretap" in quotes.
"Nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that's a very
important thing," Trump said.
A Slate report added, "It is
hard to fully describe how clownish the president of the United States looks
during this portion of the interview."
If the goal of the appearance was
to renew fears about Trump's stability, he succeeded beautifully.
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