Once again bypassing the hopelessly jaundiced media, President Trump announced that he just learned that his predecessor in the White House bugged Trump Tower during the last election.
“This is McCarthyism!” he declared, in 140 characters or less.
All the digits fit to print!
“I 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!”
Ever litigious and meticulous about any slight, Mr. Trump is always on the march for justice.
“How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Cue total media freakout.
But the usual conspiracy-minded folks in the media were suddenly and uncharacteristically uncurious about this latest case of alleged Watergate-style political buggery.
No proof, they exclaimed! Reckless accusations! Unfounded charges!
There is, to be clear, an unchallenged story written a few months back claiming that the Obama administration sought authorization from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Trump Tower as part of an investigation into links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This request was initially denied, according to the story, before it was ultimately granted.
Now this, alone, is a stunning charge. The assertion that one sitting branch of the federal government used American intelligence operatives to spy on the campaign of a political enemy in the midst of a presidential campaign would, normally, be an explosive story that the media could never resist.
But these are not normal times.
Mr. Obama, the hounds bay, would NEVER order agents to spy on a political opponent. Anyway, his Justice Department would have to go through the FISA court to get permission to do it.
So, basically, the evidence for why this is all such a suddenly bogus claim is that Mr. Obama would never do it.
Yet, this is the same Barack Obama who spent eight years in the White House politicizing every imaginable aspect of the federal government in order to punish his enemies and reward his friends.
The massive stimulus program turned into a boondoggle for his friends in the environmental jihad. His IRS became weaponized to go after political enemies.
Mr. Obama’s Justice Department went so far pushing a political agenda against lawful gun ownership that they put thousands of illegal guns into the hands of criminals. Even after it was revealed that these guns were used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Obama administration was unrepentant.
This is the same Barack Obama who ordered the federal government to take over the entire healthcare industry — one-sixth of the U.S. economy — in a brazen attempt to advance his own partisan, political agenda.
This guy is so overtly and nakedly political that he spent every ounce of his political capital during his presidency to turn community policing into a political agenda. Remember, only Black Lives Matter.
Even race could not escape the clutches of his political maw. “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama once said. Barf.
Now we read reports in The New York Times that the Obama administration left “bread crumbs” in hopes of trying the Trump campaign to the Russians after Mr. Obama left office. And U.S. intelligence agents spied on Mr. Trump’s national security adviser and leaked the results of that spying.
And you expect the American people now to believe that Mr. Obama didn’t bug Trump Tower because, well, that would just be too political? As Mr. Obama’s old Chicago preacher once famously said: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
• Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.