Just when we thought Donald Trump couldn’t get any more outrageous (and spurious) he comes through and surprises us. It would not be hyperbole to say that the tweets Trump fired off over the weekend were, quite possibly, his most stunning yet.
On Saturday President Trump accused former President, Barack Obama, of tapping his phones during last year’s election campaign.
Now, while it’s no surprise that The Donald used Twitter to make these claims (because he’s one of the few people who still uses the platform) this is perhaps his most troubling Twitter moment yet. Why? Put simply: the claim doesn’t appear to be back up by any evidence whatsoever.
Trump’s timing, as ever, is impeccable. He’s in very hot water over Russia. And what does a bully do when they’ve been caught out? What does someone who knows they’re seriously in the wrong do when their dodgy dealings are revealed? They try to weasel their way out of the situation and deflect the heat onto someone else.
At present the cloud looming largest over Trump’s White House is the question of whether or not key members of Trump’s team colluded with Russian officials to help him win the election. Trump has already lost one member of his team who he was forced to ask for the resignation of because of this. And, at the end of last week, Trump’s Attorney General, Jess Sessions, said publically that he would recuse himself into the enquiry about what actually happened after it was revealed that his impartiality was in doubt because he had misled Congress about the fact that he had meetings with Russia’s ambassador during Trump’s election campaign.
So, you see, all of this leaves Donald Trump in full crisis management mode. So it seems that someone on his team, or perhaps the President himself, decided that the best way to take attention away from his own predicament was to drag Obama into it. By asking Congress to look into the allegations that Obama ordered surveillance on him as part of their inquiries into Russian interference in the election, the President has been able to take ownership of the story and stop it being about his alleged wrong doing. So far, so school boy.
As if the above wasn’t enough, this story developed another twist when it was reported by the New York Timesthat the FBI director, James Comey, had asked Congress to reject Trump’s claims and said that his claims on Twitter were false and needed to be corrected. However, as yet, no statement has been released by the FBI or the Justice Department.
So there you have it. The latest in surreal Donald Trump news or, perhaps, it would be more appropriate to file this one under ‘fake news’? Jokes aside, Trump has really raised the stakes. He is a sitting President who deliberately suggested Obama was not born in America before he became President, declared free press to be an ‘enemy of the American People’ once in office, as well as spread unfounded rumours about Sweden and, now, made what appear to be baseless accusations against Obama and his administration on social media.
Serious questions need to be asked about this because, at present, the American President shouts ‘FAKE NEWS’ whenever there’s a story he doesn’t like about him and, yet, manages to be one of the biggest proponents of misinformation, inaccuracy and rumour going.
There's a word for information which is biased or deliberately misleading in order to promote a political cause or point of view. It's not fake news. It's propaganda. When people who hold official government positions deliberately mislead the public that is very serious indeed.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.