Republican strategist Rick Wilson has a notorious dislike for President Trump’s special brand of ignorance. After Trump accused President Obama, without evidence, of personally abusing his power to spy on Trump, Rick Wilson pointed out just how stupid that accusation really is.
If President Obama had wanted to use the government to get Trump, he could have easily leaked his tax returns. You know, the super secret tax returns Trump refuses to provide to the American people even though every other modern presidential candidate has done so.
Wilson wrote, ” 1/ What would have hurt Trump more? Having the FBI/NSA/CIA got to FISC to beg for warrants that may or may not have borne fruit… 2/ Or having the IRS leak Trump’s tax returns? You do the math.”
2/ Or having the IRS leak Trump's tax returns? You do the math.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 5, 2017
If President Obama were like Trump, he might just have done such a thing.
But President Obama did not operate like Trump. Under President Obama, Loretta Lynch stepped aside after she spoke to former President Bill Clinton on a tarmac, because of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. This happened not because it was forced, although conservative media made much of this brief interaction while now justifying the Trump campaign’s constant private chatter with Russians during the election, but because the Obama White House operated to strict codes of ethics and standards.
This is an acknowledged fact about the Obama White House, and no matter how often Trump tries to paint Obama with his own brush, Trump is the person who has operated like mafia thug throughout his entire adult professional life, not Obama.
If Obama had wanted to get Trump, he wouldn’t have wasted time on wiretaps…
… and then held on to them until after the election. This literally makes no sense.
President Obama is not nearly as taken with Trump as Trump is with him, and while Trump tried for years to bring down President Obama over Trump’s failure to read a birth certificate, Obama is not a petty man.
That doesn’t mean Obama doesn’t love this country – and yes, he did make sure Trump couldn’t silence this investigation. He did that because it was the right thing to do for western democracy, and he couldn’t trust Congressional Republicans to be patriots.
But Obama is also a smart man, and if he had wanted to take Trump down using the powers of his presidency, he could have easily – and with much less chance of being caught- leaked the tax returns.
Former President Barack Obama is somewhere laughing right now. Donald Trump is playing thug, and President Obama is far, far too intelligent for that.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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