The Trump administration through Sean Spicer and National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster have apologized to Britain’s intelligence service, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, for falsely accusing it Thursday night of wiretapping Donald Trump at the request of President Obama.
All based on something they watched on Fox News. Sean Spicer said during a press conference that because Fox News said so, we must take the threat of British spying seriously, to which claim GCHQ – which never responds to news stories – correctly responded, “Utterly ridiculous.”
Watch the sordid details courtesy of The Telegraph:
According to Spicer,
“He’s able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on it.”
“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command – he didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice – he used GCHQ.”
This was Spicer’s source, Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News on March 14th:
“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command – he didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice – he used GCHQ.
“He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump’s conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he’s able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot.”
Right.
According to The Telegraph,
Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. “The apology came direct from them,” a source said.
General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister’s National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s US ambassador.
Yes. This is the math Republicans do. Fox News + Donald Trump = apologies to America’s ally Great Britain.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesperson said,
“We’ve made clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We’ve received assurances that these allegations won’t be repeated.”
Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office.
This latest Trump foreign policy fiasco is completely unacceptable. Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert asks, “remind me again: how many times did Obama have to apologize to our oldest ally?”
We can answer him easily: ZERO times. And 0, as it happens, is an important number to the Trump administration.
Donald Trump has gone exactly 0 days without being a national embarrassment since taking office two months ago. At this rate, it isn’t likely he’ll ever reach one day, let alone string two or more together.
Republicans and Fox News falsely accused President Obama of carrying out an “apology tour” but here it turns out the real apology tour is coming from Donald Trump and his collection of conspiracy theorists with the collective lying ability of an eight-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
As Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes said this morning, “This is a crazy way to conduct foreign policy.” Sad!
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