Trump Believes Talk Radio Host over FBI Director

Via the NYT,  Trump Is Said to Reject Comey Assertion That Wiretapping Claim Is False

President Trump does not accept the contention of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, that Mr. Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama had him wiretapped was false, a White House spokeswoman said on Monday.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Mr. Comey had asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject Mr. Trump’s assertions. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is untrue and must be corrected, but the department has not released any such statement.

A White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was asked early Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” whether Mr. Trump accepted Mr. Comey’s contention. “I don’t think he does,” she said.

“I think he firmly believes that this is a story line that has been reported pretty widely by quite a few outlets,” Ms. Sanders said. She went on to cite several news reports about the F.B.I.’s investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

[…]

The White House has not officially said what led Mr. Trump to make the claims.

But administration officials have acknowledged that it was primarily based on unverified claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New York.

This is, ultimately, not surprising.  However, it is still utterly stunning.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder how well Comey sleeps at night.

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Eric Florack says:

    Completely understandable since Come in aiding Hillary Clinton.y is documented having lied to Congress

    And now, we know why. It seems Comey has been getting millions of dollars through his connections to the Clinton Foundation.

    http://truthuncensored.net/busted-fbi-director-received-millions-from-clinton-foundation-his-brothers-law-firm-clintons-taxes-video/

  2. Mitch says:

    If a warrant was issued, it means a court found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to warrant surveillence. Trump and the individuals involved have reason to be concerned.

  3. @Eric Florack: The notion that Comey is in HRC’s pocket is one of the truly most amazing things I have read in some time.

    Alternative facts, indeed.

  4. Terrye Cravens says:

    @Eric Florack: That is ridiculous. Comey probably cost Clinton the election.

  5. Terrye Cravens says:

    If Trump has evidence to back this up, he can release it. The liar.

  6. CSK says:

    Well, of course Trump believes talk show hosts and The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Conservative Treehouse, Infowars and all the other paranoid crackpot semi-literate hysterical bloggers. They’ve kissed his flabby derriere, and the more you kiss his flabby derriere, the more legitimate a news source you are.

  7. Argon says:

    Well Kellyanne Conway did break radio silence to comment that Trump has ‘information and intelligence that the rest of us do not”. For once, I believe her. I doubt anyone has access to the ‘information’ that resides exclusively in Trump’s fevered imagination.

  8. David M says:

    @Terrye Cravens:

    He read it on Brietbart. What more evidence could he offer?

  9. Eric Florack says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: take a close look at the facts Steven. And here’s a clue. You’ve been missing them all along

  10. Eric Florack says:

    @Terrye Cravens: Comey is the reason Clinton is not in the jail cell that she deserves right now.

  11. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: It’s like talking to rocks, except that the rocks listen more closely and are open to reasoning and facts.

  12. Pch101 says:

    @Eric Florack:

    I find it amusing that conspiracy nutters are so impressed by their own supposed wisdom.

  13. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @Eric Florack: @Eric Florack: @Eric Florack: Un. Flocking. Believable. I would write you off as a partisan hack, but it doesn’t seem fair to partisan hacks.

  14. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @Terrye Cravens: Now wait a second. If you read Bit’s link, you’ll see what passes for “facts” in Florakabekibekistanstan. The fact that Trump declared that he “found out” qualifies as all the facts necessary–it’s eyewitness testimony, after all. What more “facts” could you want?

  15. Joe says:

    Yet another thread spooled around a troll.

  16. Kylopod says:

    I think you are making the mistake of assuming that Trump believes the stories himself. This is the man who held up what he claimed were Trump Steaks that bore the label of a different company. The man who denies having said things still on his Twitter feed, or even things he said minutes earlier at the same event. The man who has throughout his career been on both sides of virtually every major political issue. The man who once befriended Hillary Clinton only to later call her a criminal he’d put in jail, and then later to say he wouldn’t bother. The man who embraced birtherism just a couple of years after praising Obama to high heaven, and then later tossed it over his shoulder when he decided it was inconvenient for him.

    He’s not delusional, he’s lying, which to him is as natural as breathing. I doubt he truly believes the wiretapping story any more than he believed the story about Ted Cruz’s dad being involved in the JFK assassination. Indeed, to even ask what Trump “believes” is to miss the point, since the man does not appear to hold fixed beliefs at all. He adopts crackpot theories the way people try on shoes, and the truth content of his statements is simply irrelevant to him.

    Indeed, while I’d put my money on Levin lying as well, I’d actually have an easier time with the idea that Levin sincerely believes what he’s saying than I’d ever think the same about Trump.

  17. KM says:

    @Eric Florack:

    Comey is the reason Clinton is not in the jail cell that she deserves right now.

    Ironic since Comey might be the reason Trump will be in the jail cell he deserves shortly. His White House has pay for play, private email servers, massive dysfunction, coverups about dead service men … basically everything you idiots have ever accused her of, he’s done more in less time. Plus bonus participation in foreign espionage by no less then three of his chosen high-level advisers and quite possibly the man himself.

  18. al-Alameda says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:
    Wouldn’t it be interesting if Russian hackers hacked Trump’s Twitter Account, put out a message like, “I want to exit our treaty with NATO by the end of the year” or “FBI sources tell me that Hillary should be in jail”?