I give you this series of early morning tweets from the President of the United States of America, as collated by Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
How low has President Obama gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
These ludicrous accusations are based, apparently, on a conspiracy theory in the far right-wing media. Donald Trump is obviously and desperately trying to deflect attention from the Russiagate controversy swirling around his presidency.
An Obama spokesperson replied:
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.
If we step back, we can consider some of the people who have graced the Oval Office: Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt, George H W Bush, John F Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama… and then we see this dangerous, complete joke of a President tweeting before he’s shaved. The fine world reputation of successive US Presidents as, more or less, wise and sensible people is being trashed by one man who received three million less votes than his competitor.
I’m sorry but Americans – you are responsible for this total joke and you need to sort it out. Your reputation as one of the finest nations on the face of the earth has been trashed in two months of the most disgraceful presidency ever. Whether it be ensuring Trump isn’t re-elected, and/or reforming the Presidential electoral system, Americans are the only people who own this mess and can do something about it.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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19 Comments
I couldn’t agree more. The President of the United States is a dangerously irresponsible man-child who cannot deal with criticism and use deflection of the “look over there!” variety to distract from his utter incompetence.
The moment I heard this nonsensical story about Obama ordering a wire tap I thought a) what is he trying to deflect attention from? and b) isn’t this the second or third impeachable statement/action he has made in only a few weeks in office?
He says ‘nothing found’. Has he got paranoid tendencies.? As for McCarthy looking for ‘reds under the beds’. Is he and his right wing pals playing the McCarthy game?. This senator disappeared into the mist of time.
Whilst I am here. I believe he should be put under constant never ending pressure to reveal his tax position, or has he got something to hide?
In the end Trump and the Republicans have to be dealt with politically and we can only hope that the trauma of the immediate post-election period has concentrated the minds of Democratic leaders thinking about what sort of future they actually want. However we can also hope that there will be plenty of sideways thinking going on e.g. encouraging more and more criminal investigation of Trump subordinates to reduce their capacity to do damage – e.g. along the lines of prosecuting Al Capone for tax irregularities. It’s not all about trying to impeach the President.
At the moment the American people seem fairly content.
Friday, March 03, 2017
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-seven percent (47%) disapprove.
The latest figures include 37% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 36% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of +1.
Rasmussen has a long-standing bias favoring Republicans.
If one puts all the polls together 43.9% approve of Trump and 49.9% disapprove.
Trump is not a “joke.” He has far too much power.
On his job approval ratings Rasmussen is one of many polling companies but has a republican leaning bent, so an overall poll rating is better to view than a conservative outlier, for instance CNN don’t use Rasmussen because they don’t meet their standards. Overall his job approval rating is well below Presidents who have only been at the job for 6 weeks, but of course he’s not like any other President that we’ve seen in modern times. On the wider issues with Trump, he needs to be held up to the same standards as previous presidents if he is to be given the respect he believes he is deserved, and I think he is falling far short of that standard.
When I read the latest evidence free rantings of the President of the United States this morning the first thing thought was “why is Trump worried that Obama might of tapped his phone?”
I hear there is going to be an investigation. I wonder how it will go?
“So Mr Trump, we are here to investigate the allegations you made about Barack Obama authorising phone tapping in your offices. Could you show us the evidence?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Well thank you Mr Trump. That concludes our investigations…”
Dangerous and difficult all his life.
The latest Trump NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/02/27/nbcwsj-poll-n2291061
It would appear that Americans are more optimistic about the future of their country than liberal europeans.
You forget, Geoffrey – as he said to a Scottish Parliament committee, he is the evidence.
Did Putin do the wiretap, if there was a wiretap? The Russians had a lot more to gain.
Trump is the democratically elected President of the US. He has far from a majority of support, but he does have strong support. Indeed, there is surprising support for him this side of the pond, and in emerging markets. The US system has handled a mentally failing president in recent history, and if that is the problem the US system can handle it again. In the meantime, we need a clear, coherent strategy to deal with him. WE need to focus on wider relationships in the Trump administration and limit the damage he can cause us.
@Paul Walter: “I’m sorry but Americans – you are responsible for this total joke and you need to sort it out. Your reputation as one of the finest nations on the face of the earth has been trashed in two months of the most disgraceful presidency ever.”
Well, if I were an American (which I am not) I certainly would not like to be lectured in this way by a foreigner. What I would welcome is some understanding as to why so many of my compatriots voted for Donald Trump. Or perhaps you would dismiss them all as ignorant bigots? I would prefer to think about the problems of, for example, the Rust Belt, where industry has been decimated by globalisation – a point even the Guardian has had the decency to acknowledge: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/21/disaffected-rust-belt-voters-embraced-donald-trump-midwestern-obama
I would also like others to consider how much so many Americans have been alienated by the political establishment. Instead of hypocritically protesting against the result of a democratic process, liberals should accept the reality and find ways to get alongside the new President to work for the common good, hard though it may be (after all, liberals in this country were not slow to jump into bed with the Tories when power and influence beckoned…)
Allistair
American friends have complimented me on the article actually. Perhaps it is patronising for you to assume what Americans think?
2,868,691 more people voted for Hilary Clinton than Donald Trump.
If 41,000 voters – less that a thirtieth of one per cent of all those who voted – had voted for Clinton rather than Trump in Wisconsin, Pensylvania and Michigan then Clinton would have won.
It’s up to Democrats in the US to work out how to win next time – not me.
And please don’t try to put words into my mouth.
The latest Wikileaks document dump shows how out of touch the naysayers are when it comes to wiretapping and mass surveillance by the US.
Additionally, I don’t see how anyone who supported Clinton can describe anyone else as dangerous. Clinton wanted to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria. Aside from the illegality of that action to anyone else but the warmongers in wWashington, how would that have had any other outcome than a thermonuclear war?
Hilary Rodham (Clinton) was a young lawyer who worked on the impeachment of President Richard Milhous Nixon, losing weight in the process to the extent that Bill Clinton worried about her health. Nixon said “I am not a crook” but resigned. Hilary wrote about the impeachment of another President who had dismissed a Cabinet member. The impeachment failed legally because the president had not appointed the cabinet member, his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, had done so. The impeachment also failed by one vote, partly because who would have succeeded.
There never was a legal case for impeaching Bill Clinton, he agreed to impeachment, expecting to win, in order to get the issue out of the way. The special prosecutor tried to ensure that Clinton would be unable to do his job as President, but failed.
There have been other impeachments at lower levels.
Donald John Trump appears to be sensitive to criticism, asking for comparisons. Try Thomas Jefferson, a truly great President, we would call him democratic, but his party was Republican. The opposing party was the Federalists. This was after the invention of the printing press and well before the internet, but the issues of fake news, trolls etcetera were the same.
Richard Nixon, also a Republican, got a bad press when he was a McCarthyite and when he was Vice President to the popular Dwight Eisenhower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
http://us.blastingnews.com/news/2017/05/texas-representative-al-green-calls-for-impeachment-of-donald-trump-001687061.html
A President who was greatly loved by the American people was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected four times. He was therefore hated by political opponents (Republicans) who limited the number of terms to two.
As Tom Lehrer said “This is as American as apple pie.”
Source: Jefferson Himself edited by Bernard Mayo 1992, SBN 8139-0284-3.