I don’t know whether this was what Trump intended but the stories about Russian hacking the election have gone absolutely dead, as have almost all stories related to Obama having placed some kind of phone surveillance on Donald Trump himself. Having become blindingly clear that the Obama White House had indeed initiated that surveillance, with the virtual certainty that none of it would have been done without Obama’s complicity, the entire episode seems to have vanished into air. Since there is nothing that can any longer be used in bringing Trump down, it has gone into hibernation across the media and will remain that way unless something happens that the left and the media believe can again be used to undermine Trump.
This is part of what disturbs me about the blog support network on the right. It is entirely defensive. A story that was utterly preposterous, that Trump and his associates had collaborated with the Russians was, and is, treated as a genuine issue that needs to be sorted out, rather than as a pathetic and disgusting ploy by a bunch of leftist loons and their scribes to harm Trump and short circuit his election. Same for the story about electronic surveillance on Trump during the election. Now that it has been dropped by the media, it has been dropped almost across the board. Yet as had been said by many, this is a far worse crime than Watergate and if true, was a blatant attempt to subvert the democratic processes of the United States and steal the election. Spying by a president on political enemies is an evil, bringing us within close proximity to a police state. Had it been a Republican president involved, no other stories short of World War III would have made it to the top of a front page for the next six months until whoever it was had been hounded from office.
So let us have one final look at this surveillance story, old and stone cold news though it may now have become. The table above comes from this: FISA Court: Whatever Obama Wanted Obama Got. This ought to be seen as a massive scandal:
FISA became a rubber stamp for the Obama administration. Between 2010 and 2015, FISA did not deny even one of the 9,400 applications submitted by the federal government. These applications sought “to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes,” according to reports filed by the U.S. Justice Department. . . .
The court denied a grand total of zero government FISA applications from 2010 through 2015. However, the court did modify some applications that it approved. And the government withdrew some of those it submitted.
That is to say:
9,391 of the 9,400 applications submitted were approved. The court modified 217 of those it approved. And the government withdrew 9.
But the story is dropping off the radar if it has not entirely disappeared since there is no glory in it for the left. To which we may add this: SAME NY Times Reporter Said Trump Team Was Wiretapped In Jan., But Said TRUMP Lacked Evidence In March. Go to the link for details, which will only confirm everything you already know.
And then, of course, there’s this: Obama v. Trump: Strictly Correct & Misleading v. Not Strictly Correct But Fundamentally True. Everything they say is dependent on how you parse the word “ordered”, as in whether Obama ordered the surveillance. The point:
What Obama and his minions (and the Democrats and many in the media) say is likely to be correct, strictly speaking, but fundamentally misleading. In contrast, what Trump says is often incorrect, strictly speaking, but captures the fundamental truth.
This is what almost certainly happened. The Obama White House via FISA or some other agency bugged Trump’s phones. To wait for definitive evidence – and I find it unimaginable what such evidence could be short of a taped conversation – in such a fluid area where you know nothing could have happened unless Obama had given his OK in one way or another is to let them get away with their efforts to undermine the democratic system. The right side of politics are the worst political fighters I have ever seen, and it is not only a disgrace, but is putting all of us in deepest jeopardy.