What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

Trump has tweeted that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower prior to the election.

He better have proof for that.

He doesn't need shit. 40% of the American voting population automatically believes him.

[CountDeMoney]

Post Politics
Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of 'Nixon/Watergate' plot to wiretap Trump Tower
The Failing Washington Post
By Philip Rucker, Ellen Nakashima and Robert Costa
March 4 at 9:11 AM

President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a "Nixon/Watergate" plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.

Citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of five tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was "wire tapping" his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. "Bad (or sick) guy!" he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in "nothing found."

Trump offered no citations nor did he point to any credible news report to back up his accusation, but he may have been referring to commentary on Breitbart and conservative talk radio suggesting that Obama and his administration used "police state" tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team. The Breitbart story, published Friday, has been circulating among Trump's senior staff, according to a White House official who described it as a useful catalogue of the Obama administration's activities.

A spokesman for Obama did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Trump has been feuding with the intelligence community since before he took office, convinced that career officers as well as holdovers from the Obama administration have been trying to sabotage his presidency. He has ordered internal inquiries to find who leaked sensitive information regarding communications during the campaign between Russian officials and his campaign associates and allies, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Some current and former intelligence officials cast doubt on Trump's assertion.

"It's highly unlikely there was a wiretap," said one former senior intelligence official familiar with surveillance law who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. The former official continued: "It seems unthinkable. If that were the case by some chance, that means that a federal judge would have found that there was either probable cause that he had committed a crime or was an agent of a foreign power."

A wiretap cannot be directed at a U.S. facility, the official said, without finding probable cause that the phone lines or Internet addresses were being used by agents of a foreign power — or by someone spying for or acting on behalf of a foreign government. "You can't just go around and tap buildings," the official said.

Trump sent the tweets from Palm Beach, Fla., where he is vacationing this weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago estate. It has long been his practice to stir up new controversies to deflect attention from a damaging news cycle, such as the one in recent days about Sessions and Russia.

Trump's tweets took numerous top White House aides by surprise, according to a second White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Saturday was expected to be a "down day, pretty quiet," this official said, and there was little, if any, attempt to coordinate the president's message on the wiretapping allegations.

Here are Trump's tweets, in the order they were sent:



    Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

    Just out: The same Russian Ambassador that met Jeff Sessions visited the Obama White House 22 times, and 4 times last year alone.

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

    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!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

    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!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

    How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Trump did not stop tweeting there. About an hour later, the president revived one of his favorite feuds, this one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie star-turned-California governor has been hosting "The New Celebrity Apprentice," the NBC reality franchise that Trump helped found.

Schwarzenegger announced Friday that he would not return to the show for another season because, he said, the show had too much "baggage." But Trump insisted on Twitter that there is more to the story than that.

    Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

When the nuclear conflagration comes, it will be on a Saturday morning.

[celedhring]

This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang,
but with an early morning gutter tweet.

[CountDeMoney]

[Syt]

[CountDeMoney]

"...Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."
--SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Stephen Miller

[HVC]

I see trump is already auditioning for the next Independence Day movie.

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/04/donald-trump-accuses-obama-of-wire-tapping-his-office-before-election

[...]Trump's tweets follow claims made by the conservative radio host Mark Levin on his Thursday night show about the alleged steps taken by the Obama administration to undermine the Republican candidate's campaign to win the White House.

The presenter called the effort a "silent coup" by the Obama administration and called for a congressional investigation into the issue. That contrasts with demands from across the US political spectrum to examine Russian interference in the presidential election.

Levin's comments were followed up by Breitbart News, the "alt-right" website formerly run by Steve Bannon, who ran the Trump campaign and is now the president's chief strategist.

The article stated: "The Obama administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorisation to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign; continued monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA [National Security Agency] rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government, virtually ensuring that the information, including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media."

The Breitbart report references recent claims that the FBI asked the foreign intelligence surveillance court for a warrant last year to monitor members of the Trump team suspected of being in contact with Russian officials. The request for the warrant was initially rejected before being granted in October, the reports have said.

Democratic congressman Seth Moulton, a member of the House armed services and budget committees, told the MSNBC channel: "This is right out of Donald Trump's reality TV playbook. He's trying to distract attention from the real story here which is his campaign, his administration's contact with Russian officials ... There's clearly a deeper story here and we the American people need to know how high this conspiracy goes."

Moulton added: "Obviously contacts with Russian intelligence officials are monitored: that's part of maintaining our national security. So, if under the Obama administration they were simply monitoring contacts with Russian officials – not trying to wiretap into the Trump campaign but simply looking at who Russian officials were talking with – and then Trump campaign officials got ensnared in that net, then it's a total mischaracterisation to say President Obama was wiretapping Trump."

Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who is a member of the House intelligence committee, told Fox News that Trump "is not credible when it comes to talking about Russia."

Swalwell downplayed Trump's allegation. "I think this is just the president up early doing his routine tweeting, he said. "Presidents don't wiretap anyone. These are pursued by the Department of Justice in accordance with the FBI and signed off by a judge."

[CountDeMoney]

Moulton added: "Obviously contacts with Russian intelligence officials are monitored: that's part of maintaining our national security. So, if under the Obama administration they were simply monitoring contacts with Russian officials – not trying to wiretap into the Trump campaign but simply looking at who Russian officials were talking with – and then Trump campaign officials got ensnared in that net, then it's a total mischaracterisation to say President Obama was wiretapping Trump."

This.

[celedhring]

So it was a FISA tap then? It would be ironic if the GOP finally comes round to reform that shit, although I guess they won't until the Dems are back in power.

[Berkut]

This is why I was not impressed with his speech. I knew it was the anomaly, and he would very soon return to form.

[The Brain]

With time, and long years of actual service by non-insane presidents, the stink and ridicule that now attaches to the White House might wash away. Mine is a message of hope.

[CountDeMoney]

So it was a FISA tap then?

It's all Breitbart bullshit article unless proven otherwise.

[Phillip V]

Any expectation of an Obama response to Trump's accusation?

[The Brain]

It's a giveaway that Trump claims they found nothing. If the taps were real surely they would have found the greatest conversations ever?