Day 490: Trump‘s latest conspiracy theory is lazy, repetitive and lacks any evidence

Donald Trump’s latest stab at currying favor among his base during a flailing presidency involves running back many of the same elements as one from last year: Barack Obama, deep state conspiracies and spying on the Trump campaign.

Last year, Trump falsely claimed that Obama had Trump’s phones tapped and that the intelligence agencies were seeking to undermine his campaign.

Now, Trump is falsely claiming that Obama had a spy embedded with his campaign in an effort to undermine it.

He accused former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper of admitting to the scheme.

Except, like most of Trump’s claims, this is easily debunked. For one, Clapper admitted no such thing.

During a Tuesday interview on The View, he was asked whether the FBI was spying on Trump’s campaign. His answer was clear:

“No, they were not. They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence which is what they do.”

On top of that, as we noted on Day 487 — when Trump crossed the red line and demanded the DOJ investigate themselves and the FBI — the story of what happened isn’t particularly complicated or out of the realm for intelligence agencies.

Multiple outlets reported late last week that the FBI sent a confidential source to speak with aides in Trump’s campaign about ties to Russia. In other words, the FBI was following leads and legitimately investigating Trump-Russia ties in 2016, and possibly even earlier. There’s no allegation that the FBI implanted an agent or source within Trump’s team to undercut his election chances, merely that someone spoke with aides about the goings-on.

American intelligence agencies were tracking Russians. Turns out, they had many, many associations with the Trump team. Those associations — and the subsequent lying about them — have led to numerous indictments and guilty pleas from aides as a result of the on-going Robert Mueller investigation.

All of the bluster by Trump is yet another pathetic smear attempt to cover-up his team’s various connections with Russians. He has to find some way to keep up the facade for his base that the Mueller investigation — no matter how many indictments and guilty pleas it yields — is some sort of witch hunt. Despite all the fruit the investigation has borne, Trump’s only defense is to run back similar (and debunked) conspiracy theories to last year’s false claims.

490 days in, 972 to go

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