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As Ive said before, Trumps foreign policy mostly boils down to anything but Obama:

No matter how Trump ultimately comes out of the foreign-policy ideology test, what he really seems to want to be on the world stage is the not-Obama. And when faced with a choice, the best way to understand what Trump will do is to expect he will opt to differentiate himself as much as possible from his predecessor.

Hes proved hes not Obamaand thats useful to him, one former senior Obama official told me, one of many veterans of the previous administration I spoke with Friday who were supportive of Trumps airstrike on Syria.

It fits the pattern I mentioned earlier this week. Whenever one party takes over the presidency from the other, there is always some of this, but in Trumps case positioning against many of the things Obama was for explains more about his foreign policy because he has so few set views on these issues. Unfortunately, the anti-Obama positioning only seems to run in one direction: more intervention and less diplomatic engagement. Trump isnt cancelling Obamas support for the war on Yemen. On the contrary, he has increased U.S. support for that atrocious war, and may increase it even more in the future. He isnt scaling back the war on ISIS, but instead has escalated it. He wants to undo the few things that Obama got right, and he wants to make Obamas worst policies even worse.

Perhaps the most alarming way that Trumps foreign policy is unlike that of his predecessor is in his decision-making process, or rather his lack of much of a process. Obama was usually slow and deliberative to a fault, and Trump is very hasty and erratic. If Obama sometimes seemed to want to ponder options endlessly, Trump is at the much riskier extreme of acting impulsively without considering the consequences. That has been on display in other ways for a long time, but it is particularly dangerous when it comes to ordering the use of force. As Emma Ashford notes, Trump seems to be prone to making snap judgments on the use of force. Given how poor his judgment seems to be, his willingness to order attacks quickly without thinking through the implications is that much more disturbing.

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A 'Not-Obama' Foreign Policy That Keeps Obama's Worst Policies - The American Conservative

President Donald Trump blamed Barack Obama for the crisis in Syria in the aftermath of a chemical attack on civilians. USA TODAY

Donald Trump and Barack Obama arrive for Trump's inauguration ceremony at the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2017.(Photo: Scott Applewhite, Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON President Trump seems to have a pretty clear idea who to blame for many of the problems that cross his desk in the Oval Office.

It's President Obama.

From the civil war in Syria and the nuclear showdown with North Korea to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt and problems with health care, the 45th president has blasted the 44th for misguided policies and weak leadership that have left him with a multitude of troubles to fix. He's even accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign and his team of breaking the law in the Russia investigation.

"I have to just say that the world is a mess," Trump lamented at a Rose Garden news conference Wednesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II, words he repeatedly has used since taking office. "Whether it's the Middle East, whether it's North Korea, whether it's so many other things, whether it's in our country horrible trade deals I inherited a mess."

Just about every president is elected after campaigns that promise a change in direction, and many previouspresidents have criticized their predecessors. That includes Obama, who faulted George W. Bush's administration for what he saw as a misguided invasion of Iraq that undermined U.S. credibility around the globe, and for failing to take adequate steps to avert the financial meltdown that greeted Obama when he took office.

That said, Trump's critique of Obama has been more sweeping and more personal than other presidents in modern times, and he has been less inclined to temper his words after being inaugurated. Some presidents become less critical of their predecessors once they are in the Oval Office themselves and find themselves facing the same tough trade-offs and difficult issues.

It comes amid Trump's frustration about scoring record-low approval ratings and heading toward the end of his first 100 days without a major legislative achievement to tout.

"Trump is unusual in placing frequent blame on his predecessor so early in his term," said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College and co-author of The Trump Presidency: Initial Assessments,being published this fall. "It's a big contrast to his extravagant promises of quick solutions to major problems."

President Trump boards Air Force One under heavy rain at Andrews Air Force Base on April 6, 2017.(Photo: Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images)

During the 25-minute news conference, Trump volunteered criticism of Obama and his team on:

A few hours earlier, the president suggested in an interview withThe New York Times thatObamanational security adviserSusan Ricemay have broken the law with actions related to Russian surveillance, although he didn't say how or provide any evidence. "A massive, massive story," Trump said, while calling the controversy over Moscow's meddling in America's election and possible collusion by his associates "a total hoax."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump isn't blaming Obama for his problems, he's blaming him for America's problems among them Syria, North Korea and overbearing government regulations. The president is "busy and focused on fixing a lot of things," she said, "challenges that are the result of Obama failures."

Several former senior officials in the Obama administration said Trump's litany of criticism, especially his allegations of criminal wrongdoing,has angered and energized them.

"We saw President Obama welcome President Trump into the White House after we were heartbroken about Hillary (Clinton) losing," said Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy White House chief of staff. "For Donald Trump to sort of hit a tough spot and decide he's going to deflect by blaming the former president ... of wiretapping it was laughable but it was also devastating."

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Another former senior administration official said Obama himself has had a more measured reaction to Trump's jibes than many of those close to him. The former president generally has declined to respond publicly to Trump, although he has said he might do so down the road on issues he considers critical.

The two have what might charitably be described as a complicated relationship. Obama famously mocked Trump as he satin the audience, stone-faced,at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. At the time, Trump was a leader in promoting the debunked allegation that Obama wasn't born in the United States. During last year's campaign, Barack and Michelle Obama stumped for Clinton in speeches that questioned Trump's character and qualifications for the White House.

Still, Obama and Trump held a cordial meeting at the White House two days after the election,then spoke by phone several times. Obama attended Trump's inauguration, but Sanders says they haven't spoken since then.

In this Nov. 10, 2016, file photo, President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump shake hands following their meeting in the Oval Office.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

Trump's attacks on Obama, including his denunciation of his signature Affordable Care Act as a catastrophic failure,have helped unite Democratsagainst him. Not a single congressional Democrat endorsed the White House-backedhealth care proposal. And Trump's jibes at Obama may well complicatehis efforts to reach across the aisle on a proposed tax overhaul and an infrastructure bill.

It's also an argument that is likely to work less well as more time passes. In relatively short order, voters tend to hold the current resident of the White House accountable for the state of the nation's economy and security. "The blame game becomes steadily less credible the longer he is in office," Schier says.

Even Trump seems to recognize that.

"I now have responsibility," Trump acknowledged in response to a question about the chemical-weapon attack on Syria. "I will have that responsibility and carry it very proudly. I will tell you that. It is now my responsibility."

Contributing: David Jackson

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Analysis: Trump gets his blame game on, targets Obama for just about everything - USA TODAY

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Barack Obama to visit Edinburgh for charity fundraiser BBC News Former US president Barack Obama is to make his first visit to Scotland when he addresses business leaders in the capital next month. He will also answer questions from the audience at the event, which is being held to raise money for charity. The ... Barack Obama to visit Scotland for charity fundraiserCNN When is Obama visiting Edinburgh, what is the Hunter Foundation and where will he be staying?The Sun Former US President Barack Obama to visit Scotland - STVSTV News Sky News -The Scottish Sun -ITV News all 28 news articles »

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Barack Obama to visit Edinburgh for charity fundraiser - BBC News

A scandal of historic and monumental proportions began with a tweet just over one month ago.

"Terrible, President Trump wrote on March 4. Just found out that Obama had (ph) 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

That tweet sent the mainstream, alt-left, hate-Trump media into an all- out frenzy. For the next several days, instead of investigating the president's serious claim, they mocked, ridiculed and bashed the president.

Here are some examples of propaganda masquerading as journalism:

Our conspiracy theory president is at it again, CNNs Brian Stelter said the day of the tweet. And whenever something like this happens, I wonder what are the president's sources of information? Where is he getting these ideas?

The next day, over at ABC, Martha Raddatz pretended to interview White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The president of the United States is accusing the former president of wiretapping him, said Raddatz, who you will remember cried on election night when Hillary Clinton lost.

I think that this is again something that if this happened, Martha -- , Sanders began.

If, if, if, if! Raddatz snapped.

It went on and on.

CNNs Anderson Cooper threw objectivity aside and determined the president was a liar.

We know the president of the United States has no facts, no facts to back up his startling allegation that the former president of the United States, President Obama, wiretapped him at Trump Tower during the campaign, Cooper said on March 16.

It's amazing to watch the White House continue to argue that the Earth is flat, Coopers colleague, Jake Tapper, said.

When the fact-challenged, destroy-Trump media finally got bored scolding President Trump over his tweet, they went right back to the same old, tired conspiracy. The one that claims Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election, a baseless assertion the mainstream media has hung onto for months without one single shred of evidence.

This Russian connection just keeps building, and every time it builds and expands, you have to wonder if Trump himself isn't worried about what's swirling around under the covers, said MSNBCs Chris Matthews.

Cooper and his pals agreed. The evil Russians and the evil Team Trump worked together to steal the election!

Then, on March 22, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he had credible evidence that President Trump and members of his transition team had been caught up in "incidental surveillance," after which their names were unmasked. Nunes also revealed this intelligence had nothing to do with Russia and was shared among high-level Obama administration officials, apparently for political purposes.

The media swung into action to investigate the serious claim and accurately reported these shocking new revelations. Oh, wait! No they didnt. They decided to destroy Nunes.

Who decided that Devin Nunes was qualified to be the House Intel chair? Because from everybody that I've spoken to who have worked with him, Republicans, Democrats, they say he is not up to that task, said MSNBCs Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who now earns a bigger paycheck as a member of the alt-left media.

Nunes, who stepped aside in the committees investigation Thursday amid a barrage of bogus claims from the media and fellow House members, put his reputation on the line to try to get to the truth.

While the alt-left, destroy-Trump-propaganda-media was busy smearing anyone and everyone who didn't echo their biased agenda, real journalists from Fox News, Circa News and Bloomberg were actually doing their jobs. And they reported that it was President Obamas national security adviser, Susan Rice, who called for the unmasking of members of the Trump transition team.

Rice didn't even deny it. But the CNN wants us to think these developments are all just a big distraction. They're back to the Russia conspiracy.

You think that this is a diversion from this Russia story? Don Lemon asked earlier this week. Because so far, we've seen no evidence that she's done anything improper, and it seems like an effort to tar and feather her to try to make a lie the truth, the original tweet by the president.

Listen, Susan Rice is being tarred, feathered and burned alive for doing her job in a good way, Van Jones replied.

Unmasking Americans just because they are her political opponents was not her job. Over at MSNBC, Chris Matthews, who once gushed that Obama sent a thrill up my leg, accused Republicans of being racist and sexist for targeting Susan Rice.

If they don't like the facts, they just claim racism and sexism. But President Trump is not letting the media define this narrative.

"It's such an important story for our country and the world. It's one of the big stories of our time," Trump said of the Obama administrations apparent use of national intelligence agencies for political opposition research.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and all of their friends in the print media especially The New York Times and Washington Post need to realize their partisanship and hatred for the president has clouded their judgment in what is now one of the biggest scandals in American history.

Admit your bias. Do your job. And apologize to America for taking so long.

Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," April 4, 2017

Sean Hannity currently serves as host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) Hannity (weekdays 10-11PM/ET). He joined the network in 1996 and is based in New York. Click here for more information on Sean Hannity.

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Sean Hannity: Media's blindness to Obama spy scandal shameful - Fox News

Following allegations of impropriety over the handling of a controversial climate change report, a government watchdog group now wants to know whether there was any collaboration between the reports lead author and a key Obama adviser. On March 27, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit seeking all records of communications between a pair of federal scientists who heavily influenced the Obama administrations climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement.

The FOIA specifically requests correspondence between Tom Karl, the former head of the climate-data program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and John Holdren, the director of Obamas Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren is from that species of Baby Boomer global catastrophists who make changing predictions each decade about how we will all die. He also happens to be the science guy who had the presidents ear for eight years.

Holdrens buddy, Tom Karl, authored a report in 2015 attempting to disprove the hiatus in global warming that had been widely acknowledged by many scientific groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The warming pause threatened to undermine the justification for a costly climate-change pact that was being negotiated at the time: How could world leaders commit trillions in tax dollars to stop global warming if it wasnt actually happening?

Karls report came to the rescue just months before the Paris Climate Conference. In announcing his findings, Karl said the new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century. How convenient. His analysis was eagerly accepted by the international science community, but others were leery about its timing; the House Science Committee has been leading an inquiry into the report for nearly two years.

But a retired top official at NOAA has now confirmed suspicions about the veracity of Karls research and about whether politics not science were at play. In February, John Bates, the former head of NOAAs climate-data archive, wrote a lengthy expos detailing misconduct at NOAA related to the report. The allegations included using inappropriately corrected datasets, violating agency protocol on data review, and failing to archive the data. In the most damning allegation, Bates said: In every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets...we find Tom Karls thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation. (You can read more about Batess allegations here and a subsequent smear campaign by the scientific establishment here.)

It was more of a political document than a scientific document, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told me. People need to know how the [climate] alarmists have taken over agencies like NOAA and NASA. This is about trying to get the truth out. Judicial Watch also filed a separate lawsuit against NOAA in 2015 attempting to get the datasets used in Karls paper.

Theres plenty of reason to suspect collaboration between Karl and Holdren. Both are professionally invested in anthropogenic global warming and have advanced their careers promoting a catastrophic view of humanitys fate due to our carbon-fueled rape of Mother Nature. In 2010, Holdren appointed Karl to serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, which oversees how 13 federal agencies advance climate science and improve the understanding of how global change is impacting society, both today and into the future. In a review for Karls 2009 book, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Holdren says he hopes the book will make people think about specific legislative proposals, and the need to move ahead, after many years of dithering and delay. (In his book, Karl states: Observations show the warming of the planet is unequivocal....Warming over this century is projected to be considerably greater than the last century.)

Both Karl and Holdren understood the stakes of the Paris climate conference, a last-ditch effort to force world leaders to impose drastic measures that would allegedly ease climate change. In an interview with National Geographic while attending the event, Holdren said the climate pact was needed because it is urgent that the nations of the world act now, both to reduce their emissions and to increase their preparedness and resilience against ongoing climate change. He believes that the world should be completely decarbonized by the end of the century, a wholly ridiculous, untenable, and pointless idea. But then again, this is the same guy who thought we would all be dead by the start of the 21st century because of one ecocatastrophe or another. When we managed to survive, he said carbon-induced famine would kill 1 billion people by 2020. (I guess it would no fun to calculate how many billions of people are fed every day thanks to carbon.)

It might take months or even years, according to Fitton, to find out whether Karl and Holdren colluded to push a dubious but favorable climate report before the Paris confab: It depends on how fast the administration can turn it around. The default position of the bureaucracy is always secrecy. Regardless, Fitton said, the climate-change movement is suffering from serious problems. Theyve lost their credibility. The public is starting to see this as a scam. Thats why the language of the climate alarmists has been intensified. Ill bet career suicide was never in the mix of catastrophic ends for the climate movement.

Julie Kelly is a writer in Orland Park, Ill.

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Did the Obama White House Collude with a Politically Motivated Scientist? - National Review