“OBAMAGATE!” the president tweets at us hourly.
“If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago—and I’m talking with 50-year sentences,” he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, who nodded sagely, murmuring, “It is the biggest political scandal we’ve ever seen.”
Asked to explain, Trump’s explanation was cogent and precise.
It’s very simple. Even before I got elected, you remember the the two lovers, right? Strzok and Page. The insurance policy. She going to win. But just in case she doesn’t, we have an insurance policy. That means that if I won, they’re going to try and take me out. That’s all it means, very simple. It’s an insurance policy. So “she’s going to win, isn’t she darling? Isn’t she going to win?”
If anything, it makes too much sense!
Later Bartiromo pivoted to asking Trump why his campaign was so amazingly successful. Because Maria Bartiromo is a very serious journalist.
Fox News is currently running wall-to-wall coverage of OBAMAGATE! after Acting DNI Ric Grenell declassified the list of government employees who requested to “unmask” the identity of the American citizen picked up on NSA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretaps. Under this theory, the intelligence agencies got a FISA warrant to intercept the communications of foreign citizens, an unidentified American was picked up speaking to said foreign citizens, national security employees used a bog standard legal procedure employed 17,000 times in 2018 alone to determine the identity of that American citizen, and this is all somehow proof of an illegal conspiracy to target Michael Flynn.
A rational person might point out that, if they knew Michael Flynn was the American being picked on those intercepts, they wouldn’t have had to unmask him. Moreover, as Marcie Wheeler notes, the vast majority of those unmasking requests precede Flynn’s December 29 and 31 phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, when the incoming National Security Advisor promised to undo the recently imposed sanctions on the Kremlin and requested support for Israel in an upcoming vote at the UN. So whichever foreign agents Flynn got picked up kibbitzing with in the period after the elections when he was already receiving classified briefings as part of the presidential transition — likely Turkish, Emirati, and/or Saudi — it had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
But whomever Flynn was talking to, those conversations caused a whole bunch of people to freak out. Look for Acting DNI Grenell to declassify those no doubt perfectly innocent transcripts … never.
Over at Fox, there is great sturm and drang because Vice President Biden requested to unmask Flynn’s identity regarding the Kislyak calls on January 12. This proves he was in on the conspiracy, Hannity shouts, without explaining how exactly. Biden couldn’t have leaked the details of the conversation to the Washington Post, since David Ignatius’s story detailing the call appeared the same day Biden made the unmasking request. And by the time the FBI agents came knocking on Flynn’s door on January 24, Biden and Obama were long gone.
Nevertheless, they are sure that Joe Biden is responsible for ordering the NSA to wiretap Kislyak in a devious attempt to pick up Michael Flynn promising to undermine the new sanctions regime. Similarly, Biden forced Michael Flynn to lie to the FBI agents about the call. And then he used mind control to force Trump to appoint Republican Rod Rosenstein, an obvious plant, who would trick the president into firing FBI Director James Comey. It doesn’t take a psychic to predict that Rosenstein would have a panic attack and appoint Robert Mueller Special Counsel after that. All of which is highly illegal, in ways which are very obvious to credible lawyers like “Judge” Jeanine Pirro.
Or, as Trump told the Washington Posts’s Phillip Rucker, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”
Case closed.
WATCH: Trump Comically Attempts to Explain ‘ObamaGate’ When Asked By Maria Bartiromo [Mediaite]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.