Ross: Trump’s wiretap controversy began with a dangling pronoun
Mar 17, 2017, 6:28 AM | Updated: 8:57 am
We all cling to this idea that, “the president knows things that the rest of us don’t.”
Related: Don’t get distracted from the real issue
But as it turns out, if you watch Fox News, you pretty much know everything the president knows. He now admits his wiretap tweet was based on a comment on Fox News.
“If you watched Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word ‘wiretap,’ you would feel very confident that you could mention the name,” Trump said.
President Trump is referring to a conversation between Bret Baier and House Speaker Paul Ryan. And he mentions a report – he doesn’t say where it came from – that the Obama administration asked for a court order to set a wiretap at Trump Tower.
“And then in October they renew it and they do start a wiretap with some computer and Russian banks and it doesn’t show up anything,” Baier reports.
And he asks speaker Ryan to comment on this:
“… like I said, none of us in Congress or anybody I know in Congress has been presented with anything to the contrary of what you just said,” Ryan said.
“So you believe it to be true?” Baier asked.
“Yeah, we have seen no evidence that anybody in this campaign was in on it with the Russians to meddle in our elections.”
Baier says you believe “it” to be true, and Ryan says yes. The “it” didn’t refer to the wiretap but rather to the lack of evidence of any collusion with the Russians.
I think Trump was confused by the dangling pronoun.
And I blame Fox for this. They should know he watches. They need to be clear. They need to name their sources. Like it or not, the president is getting his intelligence briefings from you.
He has to. If he got them from MSNBC it would take an hour!
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