What did Trump Know, and When did he Know It?

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And, can we hear the tapes please, before they get Wooded?

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98 thoughts on “What did Trump Know, and When did he Know It?

  1. “[C]an we hear the tapes please, before they get Wooded?” Ah, that’s a beautiful phrase! Making a verb out of President Nixon’s secretary. Shades of the “eighteen-minute gap” The allusion to Ms. Wood makes me feel old, because I can’t remember her first name. It was perhaps “Valerie.” Let’s Google it. Oh, she was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Mary_Woods sitting there just outside the Oval Office. But then again I _am_ indeed old, because at the Seattle World’s Fair I saw a door open and out walked Richard Nixon and Pat and Patricia and Julie. A while later I found Mr. Nixon again coming out of the exhibit of the now defunct United Arab Republic, and Mr. Nixon gave me his autograph. To quote Bob Hope — “Thanks for the memories.”

  2. This is interesting.

    I will be very interested to see if the Obama administration was spying on the Trump transition team (and possible Trump).

    Also, it will be interesting to see what the “incidental” event was that allowed the collection of this intelligence.

    Doesn’t this look worse for Obama and not Trump?

    Maybe you should be asking what did Obama know and when did he know it!

  3. @RickA:

    I will be very interested to see if the Obama administration was spying on the Trump transition team (and possible Trump).

    There is literally no hard evidence to support this claim. Tell me, does your arse get jealous of all the s**t that comes out of your mouth?

  4. “I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI” – FBI Director James Comey, on the claims by Trump of wiretapping.
    Why are you lying?

  5. I will be very interested to see …

    Would you be “very interested to see” if the Climatic Research Unit was hacked by the Russians, as is widely suspected?

  6. Julian #4:

    That is why I said “if”.

    Bernard #7:

    Yes – I would be very interested in that. I am assuming FOIA was an inside job, until proven otherwise.

  7. What Trump knew and when he knew it is very important.
    This morning, on CNN- “The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, US officials told CNN.” Trump is, of course, a doddering malignant narcissistic idiot who has taken over the country like a brainless micro-organism would, at the behest of his DNA , which in this case is Steve Bannon and the Russians. He believes and/or propagates the most insane conspiracy theories. Being a narcissist, he is easily manipulated. Does he believe all the crap he spews? We can only guess.

    There is an awful lot of religion in this current turn of events. It is as if the Christians of Murka all prayed that the filthy atheist communist Russians would not take over Murka, and Gawd heard their prayers and said “OK”. But instead, tricky guy that he is, he turned Russia into a corrupt orthodox christian capitalist state, arranged to have the Russians infiltrate the Trump campaign, and helped them win the election through hacking, disinformation, and better arithmetic, Ha ha on you, Murka! You are now part of the New Russian Empire! Ha ha!

  8. “I will be very interested ”

    But there is no evidence for it, so why aren’t you already interested in the answer?

    Because your interest is JAQing off.

  9. Wow #10:

    Not sure what you are talking about – but assuming it is climategate – there is no answer.

    We don’t know whether it was a hack or an inside job.

    That is why I said I would be interested if it was shown to be a hack.

    Bottom line – there is no answer (yet).

    We have to wait and see.

  10. @RickA #11:

    That is why I said I would be interested if it was shown to be a hack.
    Bottom line – there is no answer (yet).

    Then why in #2 did you say:

    Doesn’t this look worse for Obama and not Trump?
    Maybe you should be asking what did Obama know and when did he know it!

    ?
    It certainly looks as if your mind was already made up about the answer.

  11. “Not sure what you are talking about”

    Why not? Where did the quote come from? Or is what you said also unimportant to you?

    You have no evidence and all the evidence is that there IS no evidence, because it never happened. And there SHOULD have been evidence.

    Even Hollywood when presenting black ops show that people write things down and document them when doing bad things legally.

    But you already know that there is nothing to the claim.

    You are “interested” because you WANT it to be true, just like Steyn’s lying libelous comments. Without evidence you take their side because you WANT to. Without evidence that there is nothing to it, you WON’T be interested in FBI’s or Mann’s POV, because you DON’T want it to be true.

    You are a dishonest and lying arsehole, dick. There’s no interest there, no inquiring, just JAQing off to support your conspiracy that, despite all the evidence being against you, you are despite all that right.

  12. Watch out. RickA is trying to change the subject away from Trump’s lies about wiretapping, which means the subject is a problem for RickA.

  13. “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip a meeting with NATO foreign ministers next month in order to stay home for a visit by China’s president and will go to Russia later in April, U.S. officials said on Monday, disclosing an itinerary that allies may see as giving Moscow priority over them.”

    We certainly live in crazy times. Imagine calling back in time to tell the folks back in 2015…. ” Hello? Hi. This is steve from the future. You aren’t going to believe this! Donald Trump is going to be elected president in 2016! Really! AND, he is going to be aided in his campaign by illegal attacks against his opponent by…. wait till you hear this…. THE Russians! And Trump’s National Security Advise has to resign because he lied about his contact with the Russians! But wait! It gets better! The former head of Exxon is named Secretary of State AND he disses Nato to go visit Vladimir Putin…. Who is his best buddy!!! Yeah. I know. This sounds like a bad novel…… AND trump’s campaign manager has now been found to have worked for the Putin mob!

    Trump! Rusia! Trump ! Russia!.

    Holy shit.

  14. RickA spews:

    “I will be very interested to see if the Obama administration was spying on the Trump transition team (and possible Trump).”

    Nobody is claiming this. In fact, Nunes explicitly (in a follow-up) made clear that his claim that Trump’s team may’ve been “incidentally” monitored was not support for the claim that Trump and his team were targetted.

    “Also, it will be interesting to see what the “incidental” event was that allowed the collection of this intelligence.”

    Nunes was clear. A foreign power was being LEGALLY monitored and conversations with some of Trump’s team was incidentally picked up. Emphasis on LEGAL.

    Or so his source claims. He’s telling us he’ll never reveal how he received this information which contradicts under-oath testimony by the heads of the NSA and FBI on Monday. But even if true, Nunes made clear that the monitoring of the foreign power was legal, and that Trump and his team were not the target.

    “Doesn’t this look worse for Obama and not Trump?”

    No, it still makes Trump a liar for claiming that Obama ILLEGALLY targetted him for surveillance. Not his team, not a foreign power his team was talking to, but TRUMP. POTUS was very specific that he, personally, was being targetted and that Obama had ordered it.

  15. BBD #16:

    I have a fairly open mind about the Trump “tapping my wires” allegation.

    Trump may be wrong or Trump may turn out to be right.

    We don’t know yet.

    We will have to wait and see.

    Isn’t it possible a Russian (or the alleged non-Russian target of the FISA monitoring) could have called Trump tower?

    I am not saying any did – but I am also not saying any didn’t.

    Wouldn’t that be Obama Administration “tapping of wires” at Trump tower?

    Didn’t one or more of Trump’s transition team live at Trump tower (I vaguely recall reading that) – if any conversations were incidentally recorded – wouldn’t that be “tapping of wires” at Trump tower?

    I guess we will see.

    But it wouldn’t matter that much to me if Trump turned out to be wrong.

    When you rely on newspaper coverage you are wrong more than your are right – so it wouldn’t be anything new.

  16. “I have a fairly open mind about the Trump “tapping my wires” allegation.”

    You say this like it’s somehow a good thing.

    You see when you asked for a cite you would have been expected to close your mind to the claim being wrong if it supplied the proof you wanted the cite for.

    But because you will insist on keeping the option of what you wanted in the first place to be true to remain true, despite evidence against it, that is why your wanting a cite was irrelevant.

    And here you are again, ignoring evidence against you but virtue signalling that this intransigence in the face of contrary evidence is somehow the right and holy thing to do.

  17. “Didn’t one or more of Trump’s transition team live at Trump tower (I vaguely recall reading that) – if any conversations were incidentally recorded – wouldn’t that be “tapping of wires” at Trump tower?”

    No, not support for the assertion trump made at all, you incredible douche canoe.

  18. I have a fairly open mind about the Trump “tapping my wires” allegation.

    So you are equally prepared to accept that Trump is lying in an attempt to divert attention from his links with Russia.

    Yes?

  19. I have an open mind. The allegation is that RickA was harboring evil flying monkeys in the CIA’s secret lair on Mars. Doesn’t matter that there’s no evidence for this; I think Rickety Rick should be perpetually investigated over flying-monkeygate.

    I don’t really care about the outcome (diversionary waste of time and resources) and that proves I have an open mind, because I said so, and my mind is so awesomely mysterious that you can’t possibly know otherwise, so everything I say is just as good as what anybody else says, though we all secretly know I’m better because I’m a lawyer AND an engineer which is two brilliances in one and covers everything and supersedes all other forms of knowledge for ever and ever amen.

    Also I’m polite.

  20. So the question is, how much did Trump know about the Russian connection? Was he in the dark ( like an idiot) or was he completely knowledgeable about it ( a traitor). It astounds me that the Republicans can embrace this inarticulate, narcissistic , silver spoon clown. His ability to understand and manipulated the basest levels of the Murkan psyche is remarkable. I can’t imagine that he didn’t receive insights and guidance through Paul Manafort, his now known to be clinging to Vladimir Putin’s polyps.. with his his Czech and Yugoslavian born wives ,he is clearly a slavophile, and he is one to the extent that he loves Russia and Putin more than half the people in Murka. . He certainly seems to love Putin.

    Trump has some grandiose idea that he can make some sort of of super government alliance with Russia. Good luck with that. Alliances with bears do not often end well. Were it not for our primacy in inventing nuclear weapons, I think that we can readily surmise that WWI would have morphed into a conflict between the Soviets and the West.

  21. Oh wait. The WWII alliance between the West and Soviet Russia DID morph into a conflict between them and the West. I forgot!

  22. RickA vomits:

    “Isn’t it possible a Russian (or the alleged non-Russian target of the FISA monitoring) could have called Trump tower?”

    In which case it would’ve been that individual’s communications being listened to, not Trump being “tapped”. Trump’s allegations were very specific. You’re pretending he wasn’t.

  23. @RickA:

    I have a fairly open mind about the Trump “tapping my wires” allegation.

    Which is why you JAQed Off in your first comment?

    Trump may be wrong or Trump may turn out to be right.

    The Director of the FBI says he found no evidence that Trump is correct.

    Isn’t it possible a Russian (or the alleged non-Russian target of the FISA monitoring) could have called Trump tower?…
    Wouldn’t that be Obama Administration “tapping of wires” at Trump tower?

    No, it wouldn’t. It would be tapping the wires of the target when he or she was making a call to Trump Tower. In addition, unless Obama or a member of his administration ordered the wiretapping, it wouldn’t be anyway.
    The fact that you can’t (or more likely don’t want to) grasp these subtleties is disappointing.

  24. BBD #22:

    Yes – if that is what the evidence shows. So far that is not the case.

    OA #23:

    Go ahead – investigate away.

  25. RickA @ ~ 28

    Sure Rick, we’ll just use your tax dollars and bog down government to the point where it can’t function… Oh wait, I forgot. You don’t pay taxes and you hate government (unless it’s blowing stuff up in).

  26. Rick A calls for a special investigator to be named to investigate the suspected treason by Donald Trump and his cohort, as well as by McConnell and other congressional Republicans.

  27. You know, you can always count on Republicans to create a robust house of mirrors. Who’s investigating whom about what. You investigate me, I’ll investigate you. Who’s leaking what for what reason? You are. No you are. It’s ok. It’s not ok. What means this strange word ‘ethics’? We don’t need no stinking ethics. Yes you do. No we don’t — we don’t understand it, which means it’s silly ha ha ha. Everybody say, “Ha ha ha.”

    And you gotta love Trump saying that the intelligence services are unreliable: Because Iraq. For some reason nobody remembers the Office of Special Plans –maybe because the press want to forget the days they spent taking dictation for Republicans with one hand and beating the drums of war with the other…

  28. RickA

    Yes – if that is what the evidence shows. So far that is not the case.

    But all the top bods who would know have stated unequivocally that Obama did not have Trump surveilled (per his specific claim).

    So the evidence *so far* is that Trump was making shit up. Given the awful probs he’s got with the stink of Russian connections, and given his standard MO, it seems very likely that this was a gambit to divert attention from the awful smell.

    So on balance, I’d say you were being dishonest again.

  29. BBD #32:

    It is funny how when you disagree with someone they are a liar.

    The investigations are not over.

    Personally, I will wait until the investigations are over – and then look at what evidence has turned up and then decide if Trump is wrong (or a liar).

    You can do what you want.

  30. So dick’s claim is that the lack of evidence trump is wrong in his claim means that the lack of evidence trumps’ claim is right should be ignored….

    Because there’s evidence that trump SAID it. And that’s valid to Dick.Forget that there’s evidence that the ones who should know said it wasn’t, and that’s not proof.

  31. Julian #27:

    Interesting.

    What about a call out of trump tower to a target of interest – would that be tapping the wires of trump tower?

    What about surveillance which is not being done pursuant to a FISA warrant? Of course, that couldn’t be pinned on Obama unless he ordered it illegally (which we have no evidence of). But still – sometimes peons do stuff they aren’t supposed to do.

    We will have to see what turns up.

    All the top guys did testify they are not aware of any FISA order targeting trump tower – but after the latest revelation I would like to ask them all if they are aware of any intercepted communications by any member of the Trump transition team or Trump campaign team (whether phone, cell, text or email), whether they were the target or merely incidental.

    It sounds like the answer to that question would be different – and maybe Trump was briefed on some of those intercepts and was referring to that when he tweeted about his wires being tapped.

    We will have to wait and see what happens and what more comes out.

    it would also be interesting to see what exactly Obama meant when he ordered the preservation of all evidence of Russia stuff (I cannot remember his exact language). What was done pursuant to this order? Another area for possibly overzealous peons to overreach?

    Or maybe there is absolutely nothing to support Trump’s tweet – we will see.

  32. It is funny how when you disagree with someone they are a liar.

    Your claim was that, so far, the evidence doesn’t point to Trump making shit up. But actually, it does. So you are being dishonest to pretend otherwise.

    Read harder. It wastes less time.

  33. What about a call out of trump tower to a target of interest – would that be tapping the wires of trump tower?

    No, of *course* not. It would be tapping the subject (recipient) of the call *from* TT. Not tapping TT.

    This is so self-evident, so obvious, that it strongly suggests further partisan dishonesty on your part.

  34. BBD #37:

    You are mischaracterizing my post.

    You asked me “So you are equally prepared to accept that Trump is lying in an attempt to divert attention from his links with Russia.”

    I said “Yes – if that is what the evidence shows. So far that is not the case.”

    I see absolutely no evidence of Trump lying at all about this issue, let alone lying to ” in an attempt to divert attention from his links with Russia.” But we will see.

  35. You are mischaracterizing my post.

    No, I’m not. But you have *switched* from the post I was discussing (#28) and which I quoted to a different one

    Now that too, reeks of dishonesty.

  36. I see absolutely no evidence of Trump lying at all about this issue, let alone lying to ” in an attempt to divert attention from his links with Russia.”

    You mean all those top bods who denied the validity of Trump’s claims don’t count as evidence that he made them up??

    Most people would call your position in the light of the *evidence* partisan and dishonest.

  37. let alone lying to ” in an attempt to divert attention from his links with Russia.”

    Why else would he do such a crazy thing?

  38. “I see absolutely no evidence of Trump lying at all about this issue”

    Just out of curiosity, Rick, what would you consider evidence of lying? Or is it that, just in this case, there can never be any way to positively prove lying?

    BTW, I see absolutely no evidence that RickA isn’t hoarding flying monkeys on Mars.

  39. No evidence of President Trump lying about this, despite the fact that the intelligence community says it didn’t happen and no evidence to support him has been presented.

    Only someone as monumentally stupid as a libertarian could represent the above quote with reality.

  40. “Why else would he do such a crazy thing?”

    Because he’s crazy? Senile, delusional, hallucinatory, schizophrenic, on bad acid, has smartphone Turrets…

  41. BBD #43:

    Sure – there testimony is evidence.

    But it is not dispositive.

    There may be other evidence which shows they are wrong.

    Also – all there testimony shows (assuming there is nothing else to come out during the investigation) is that Trump is wrong – not that he lied.

    You really need to look up the definition of lie or liar in the dictionary. It requires intentional deception.

    If Trump reads an article in the New York Times saying he was wiretapped and tweets about it – that doesn’t make him a liar (if the article is incorrect) – it makes him wrong.

    But you misuse the word liar and dishonest quite frequently – so perhaps “liar” and “dishonest” merely mean incorrect to you.

  42. OA #45:

    An admission by Trump that he lied.

    Also – an admission that he made it up without any basis whatsoever – that might do the trick also. In other words – no newspaper articles no briefings etc.

    Short of that – we need to be able to read his mind to know his intent, and I cannot read minds.

  43. it makes him wrong.

    Not admitting his error in the light of all the subsequent evidence suggests he is being (and probably was being) dishonest.

    Plus there’s the back catalogue of all the other stuff he lied about.

  44. OA #45 says “BTW, I see absolutely no evidence that RickA isn’t hoarding flying monkeys on Mars.”

    That is not a lie.

    You need a better example.

  45. Short of that – we need to be able to read his mind to know his intent,

    Not really. It’s actually rather obvious to honest people.

  46. Here we are wasting time talking about lying again.

    BBD – you have never shown I lied about anything.

    You just assert it because you cannot understand how someone can disagree with your opinion about something.

    But I can and I do disagree with your opinion about lots of things.

    dean uses the word “liar” improperly also.

    Lots of people do.

  47. RickA, BBD has already answered your question to me about calls made from Trump Tower to a person under surveillance.
    w.r.t.

    What about surveillance which is not being done pursuant to a FISA warrant? Of course, that couldn’t be pinned on Obama unless he ordered it illegally (which we have no evidence of).

    There is no evidence to support this conjecture, and you acknowledge that even if there is, there is no evidence to show Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump.
    Your question is JAQing Off.

  48. There is a bit of bayesian thinking going on here: we have a long collection of incidents where Trump has made blanket statements that were shown to be lies (Obama wasn’t born in the United States being the premier example).

    Now we have a statement about President Obama going so far as to “tapp” (Trump’s spelling) his communications.

    Using Trump’s long history of making statements that are flat out lies, we can say the probability that this one is also a lie is so close to one that no person of integrity would disagree.

  49. You just assert it because you cannot understand how someone can disagree with your opinion about something.

    No, I said it because your claim was that, so far, the evidence doesn’t point to Trump making shit up. But actually, it does. So you are being dishonest to pretend otherwise.

    As I have already explained, several times.

  50. RickA @ ~ 52

    I did not say it was a lie (or technically, anything else for that matter). It is simply a practical absurdity.

    Speaking just for myself, I do make a distinction between lying and dishonesty. Trying not to be too pedantic, if you are lying you are being dishonest, but being dishonest does not necessarily mean that you are lying, it simply goes to character. This may not translate into legal language, but I think it is fair enough colloquially.

  51. New York Times Jan 20 headline
    “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides”

    When it was convenient to declare Trump a Russian mole, this was the story. When Trump flipped it around and said Obama was wiretapping him, then the Democrats had to jump around and say all these stories are false. Win for Trump, whose tweets happened when the story was Jeff Sessions and the Russians.
    If Nixon was the one who had been targeted by criminals, then What Did The President Know, and When Did He Know It, would have been irrelevant.

    We have various government agents breaking the law and leaking classified material. The identities of Americans who are incidentally picked up in monitoring of targets is supposed to stay private. Nunes is complaining about these illegal leaks.

  52. SteveP #10, that CNN story is very weakly worded. I wonder if it comes from the ‘news’ that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks. He said that shortly before his book is coming out. I say ‘news’ because this was revealed by Stone on The Circus in August.

  53. The main Sigint agency in the US is the No Such Agency (NSA). NSA basically intercepts all electronic communications in the world even those in the US. However, to use any of sigint derived from US sources a FISA warrant is required. There are some exceptions to this requirement for a warrant: if you are making a call to a foreign party or receiving a call from a foreign party that trips one of the filters a FISA warrant may not be necessary.

    (This is hard to say) Trump could be right about the surveillance but totally incorrect as how it went beyond being blocked.

    So if the calls fell into the criteria that an FISA warrant was not needed then treason by the president or his coat hangers becomes a real possibility,

  54. Julian Frost
    “I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI” – FBI Director James Comey, on the claims by Trump of wiretapping.

    Unfortunately, no one followed up get specifics. Before that, Comey had objected to the claim that Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump. If that is the focus of his ‘no information found’, then that is different from there was no wiretapping of Trump, he is not under surveillance, etc. Though if asked, I’m not sure he would have been allowed to answer if someone is under surveillance.

  55. “Here we are wasting time talking about lying again.”

    That was you brought it up, dick. BBD was saying dishonesty. Your attempt here “Here we are, having me talking abut lying again” phrased like that is, again, dishonest.

  56. “What is your understanding”

    They are different words. You can tell by the use of letters that are not identical. Letters are what identify words, and if they don’t use the same letters, this means they are not the same word.

    There is no evidence that BBD is wrong in calling you dishonest.

  57. “You mean all those top bods who denied the validity of Trump’s claims don’t count as evidence that he made them up??”

    Remember to a dishonest prick like dick here, only Trump’s accusations count as evidence. There is no evidence TT was tapped [sic].

    And there is no evidence that the claims of the FBI et al are wrong.

    But dick will insist that this hasn’t been proven the case, but won’t accept that turnip trump’s case hasn’t been proven either. He’s only open minded to the idea that orangina is correct, not that anyone else is.

  58. While complaining about Nunes, liberals should be asking if they really want the status quo to be Trump as President, free to leak to the media any intelligence gathered on communications of Democratic candidates and activists? It’s just ‘incidental’ surveillance, no harm no foul, right?
    Nixon in his autobiography apologized for WaterGate, but he thought behavior like this was just how politics was done, and did not apologize for sending the IRS after opponents(He was audited many times). Do liberals want to go with the Nixon rulebook?

  59. RickA #50
    You said that evidence that Trump was lying would be

    An admission by Trump that he lied.

    Also – an admission that he made it up without any basis whatsoever – that might do the trick also. In other words – no newspaper articles no briefings etc.

    As a matter of interest, can you give any documented example of Trump ever admitting to be wrong, under any circumstances? It seems to me that you are basically saying that you will never accept that he was being untruthful.

  60. Worth noting that Trump did not complete admit he lied. His original statement was that he saw the plane and that the payment was ransom — which is was not. Nothing at all about that in his statement.

  61. dean #71:

    I cited the article to show Trump admitting he was wrong.

    Mr. Simons asked for an example of Trump admitting he was wrong.

  62. Rick, be said originally it was ransom. He didn’t take that back. Not a complete admission.

    Why is that too complicated for you?

  63. Trump didn’t admit he was lying about Iran and the ransom, he was repeating the claim! The whole point was he didn’t say ransom, he spoke of watching a video with the money being unloaded. That’s what he wanted people to see in their mind. When he ‘walks it back’ he again speaks of planes headed to Iran and hostages coming back, reinforcing it. And yes it’s a ransom.

  64. MikeN, you are still being disingenuous and dishonest.

    Comey had objected to the claim that Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump. If that is the focus of his ‘no information found’, then that is different from there was no wiretapping of Trump, he is not under surveillance, etc.

    There were two parts to Trump’s claim. They were that:
    1) He was wiretapped, and;
    2) Said wiretapping was done on Obama’s orders.
    If he wasn’t wiretapped, he was wrong. If he was wiretapped but Obama wasn’t responsible for ordering it, he is still wrong. You are now handwaving.

  65. Sure, but then he has a convenient assigning of responsibility to Obama for everything his administration does. Twitter 140 characters, he can’t explain it all! If it’s found Obama did it, he’s fine. If not, he says he was just being unclear.
    On top of that, once the targets of the wiretapping found their communications leaked for political purposes, then Trump’s point about it being Watergate still stands(unless these were anti-Obama Republicans doing the leaking).

    It could be that Comey found no evidence of 1 or 2, but he wasn’t asked that clearly.

    It’s hard to get from
    Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides
    NYT Jan 20
    to no wiretapping.

  66. Mike, he said ransom in his original statement. Look it up.

    And no, moronic assertions aside, it was not ransom.

  67. Julian Frost’s #78 bears repeating, so here it is again:

    “There were two parts to Trump’s claim. They were that:
    1) He was wiretapped, and;
    2) Said wiretapping was done on Obama’s orders.
    If he wasn’t wiretapped, he was wrong. If he was wiretapped but Obama wasn’t responsible for ordering it, he is still wrong. You are now handwaving.”

    Got that, kids?

  68. But if he was wiretapped, is the government wrong to do it?
    Don’t you see that Trump flipped the script, and got the media liberals to backtrack on the story ‘The FBI is furiously investigating Trump.’?

    Dean, hence the followup, he didn’t JUST say ransom. The visual was important for Trump. So money that didn’t get paid for 30+ years just happens to get paid at the same time hostages were released. Sure, not a ransom.

  69. MikeN, twist and deny facts all you want. There was no wiretapping by President Obama. President Trump lied about it and his goons tried to support him.

    Ando no, in the real world, it was not ransom. The fact that the sitting president was black does not translate to ransom having been paid, no matter how badly you want it to be seen that way.

  70. >“But if he was wiretapped”
    >
    >Since he wasn’t

    Was the New York Times story of January 20th wrong?
    “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides”

  71. MikeN:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/politics/fact-check-trumps-day-of-falsehoods-and-misleading-claims.html?_r=0

    Mr. Trump cited news reports as evidence for his wiretapping claims.

    “I’ve been reading about things. I read I think it was a Jan. 20 article in The New York Times — they were talking about wiretapping.”

    This is misleading. The Times article Mr. Trump referred to did use the word “wiretap” but it did not assert that Mr. Obama had ordered surveillance of Mr. Trump, nor did it even mention Mr. Obama. Rather, the story referred to intercepted information collected overseas.

    The headline in print read, “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.” And the word appeared twice in the text of the article: “intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House” and “If Mr. Sessions is confirmed, he will for a time be the only person in the government authorized to seek foreign intelligence wiretaps on American soil.”

  72. “Was the New York Times story of January 20th wrong?”

    Was it right?

    When the National Enquirer claimed that Elvis was seen in a DesMoines burger house, were they wrong? When The Daily Sport showed pictures of a London Number 9 bus on the moon, crash landed, was it wrong?

    Is the story of Adolf Hitler being the first man on the moon wrong?

    “Adolf Hitler first man on the Moon? Nazi Germany’s ‘secret space missions’ revealed “

  73. “Mr. Trump cited news reports as evidence for his wiretapping claims.”

    And additionally, he calls them “Fake News”. Is “Mike” saying that Trump was wrong?

  74. And was it “mike” or dick who pointed out as if it were some kind of unusual failure of Obama when he failed to pass laws despite (just) holding a supermajority of seats (but not the supreme court)?

    But it looks like Republicans can’t manage it any better either. Even though they just won, own both houses and the supreme court, and the two idiots insist that Obamacare is failing and unwanted, which means fairly safe politically to remove.

    Add that hipocrisy to their lack of complaint about the massive holidaying Drumpfh (another point: why worry about not using the orange turdmonster’s name when his family already changed it once?) does, the massively increased executive orders, the use of the out clause of claiming a bill is budgetary (forget the name), the threat to remove the filibuster entirely, the ACTUAL INSTITUTION of FEMA camps, and all those things they claimed Obama was going to do Any Day Now ™, that they are suddenly silent about when their guy, instead of just being theoriesed about doing it HAS ALREADY STARTED DOING.

  75. >Did anything come of this? I heard no more about it yesterday

    Nope, other than James Rosen has chimed in. There are now two groups that are under pressure to show some evidence. Comey all but said that there is nothing on Trump. It is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. So there is no specific crime suggested, and the investigation is open ended.
    Now we have David Nunes claiming evidence from whistleblowers that will be coming soon…

  76. >Mr. Trump cited news reports as evidence for his wiretapping claims.

    But not at the time. This was after the fact citations. The point of the claims was Trump reframing the story. Media liberal cheerleading over intelligence leaks on members of his administration, turned into why is Obama investigating his political opponents?

  77. “There are now two groups that are under pressure to show some evidence. ”

    But this is going to be impossible because there’s no evidence for a thing that never happened.

    “Now we have David Nunes claiming evidence from whistleblowers”

    Ah, you mean the dude who gave a press conference telling the man under investigation what was found before the rest of the comittee, who then after saying it was something to do with trump, but listened to foreigners and as a byproduct listened to trump, then said that it was two foreigners who MENTIONED the name trump, trump being 100% not listened to at any time.

    That guy, yes?

    “But not at the time. ”

    But at the time he said he had proof. If you’re going to ignore what he said later, then you’re stuck with him lying about having proof.

  78. ” turned into why is Obama investigating his political opponents?”

    Except it hasn’t. It’s turned into “Is there any evidence that ever happened”, to which the answer is still “No”.

    Meanwhile the other investigation has turned into is trump employed by the Kremlin.

  79. >“But not at the time. ”
    >
    >But at the time he said he had proof. If you’re going to ignore what he said later, then you’re stuck with him lying about having proof.

    Assuming you actually understood that the line was about Trump and not Nunes, I concede that Trump lies a lot.

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