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At a candidates forum in early 2015, then presidential candidate Trump without a blink said, I dont know if he loves America. The he Trump referred to was, of course, former President Obama. The slap at Obama was simply the latest in Trumps by then three-year campaign to vilify, impugn, slander, and harass Obama as not only not an American citizen, but as an illegitimate President. Trumps ruthless, near obsessive, vendetta of lies against Obama paid big dividends early on. It got him briefly in the hunt for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. That made him a political household name. Three years later, in 2015, it got him to the top of the GOP presidential pack and kept him there during the primaries. It then got him the biggest prize of all, the White House.

Obama from the start was Trumps political meal ticket. When things got dull or there was a momentary rough patch on the campaign trial, Trump had Obama as his ready-made whipping boy. Nothing has changed. With Democrats screaming for answers about Trumps relations with Russia and Putin, and even some GOP leaders feeling the heat and making weak soundings about a probe or two here and there, Trump quickly trotted out his Obama meal ticket. This time its the ludicrous claim that Obama wiretapped him during the campaign, complete with the demand that Congress investigate Obama. Its tempting to simply chalk this up as yet another Trump ploy to deflect attention from his Russia connection, and in part it is. But theres more, much more to this.

Trumps persistent use of Obama as his foil isnt just to slander his presidency. Its to slander him. It isnt just political, it is personal. The two cant be separated. Trump repeatedly made clear during the early stages of his campaign that if he got in the White House hed sign any and every executive order he could to try and halt, gut, or obliterate every initiative that Obama had ever put in place. Hes been as good as his word.

Trumps assault on Obamas initiatives normally would have been the end of it. Presidents from an opposing party to varying degrees quickly sign executive orders to roll back some of their predecessors initiatives and actions when they take office. However, Trumps obsessive attacks on Obama have another aim beyond mere personal vindictiveness and deflecting attention from his disastrous administration. It sends the strong signal to his base that he will try and demolish everything that they loathed about Obama; not just his policies, but what he personally stood for.

Obama was an eight-year embarrassment to the chronic Obama haters. He was liberal. He was a Democratic. And most odious to them, he was black. Tea Party demonstrators greeted Obama at many stops during his first two years in office with placards, signs and pictures that depicted him in the most lewd, grotesque and often animal-like characterizations. This went way beyond the bounds of normal political attacks and criticism of a president. It was blatantly personal, and showed the depth of the personal distaste many had for Obama and they were not shy about showing it.

Trump at points during his campaign made no effort to correct or reprimand anyone at his townhalls and rallies who got up and vilified Obama in personal terms. This reinforced the point that Trump would make again and again that Obama was not fit from a political or personal standpoint to occupy the White House.

Even Trumps very belated acknowledgement that Obama was an American citizen was said matter of factly. There was absolutely no elaboration, let alone showing any sign of contrition for waging his ruthless and prolonged campaign to slur him as an alien.

Trump set the template early in his political game about how to go after Obama. That was to pithily toss out a sensational, outrageous accusation against or about Obama without a shred of evidence to back it up and then sit back and watch the media plaster it out as a headline or top headline news feature. The damage was done and the mission of getting tongues wagging about Obama and legions believing there must be some truth to it was accomplished.

The wiretapping charge fits the pattern to the letter. Trump doubled down on that by demanding a Congressional probe into it. The hope is that the more who believe theres any truth to this will serve to whittle away yet another tiny chunk from Obamas well-established legacy of personal honor and integrity.

The charge will, of course, go nowhere because its another Trump lie. But thats less important than making the accusation, and getting the media and public headline hit on Obama. This wont be the end. We can be sure that Trump wont rest until hes destroyed Obamas political legacy, and Obama as well.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of In Scalias Shadow: The Trump Supreme Court ( Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Read the original here:
Trump Aims To Destroy Obama Politically And Personally

Former Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest participates in a forum called The Press & the Presidency, Tuesday, March 7, 2017, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass.

Steven Senne, AP

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Former Obama administration spokesman Josh Earnest says Republican President Donald Trump is cynically using the press while also relying on it to boost his image and appeal to the public.

Earnest said Mr. Trump has a complicated relationship with the media. He said he doesnt believe Mr. Trump has any grand ambitions to do away with the First Amendment but lashes out when reporters dont echo his version of events.

He doesnt want the news media to just go away. He just wants them to be nice to him. But thats not their job, Earnest said Tuesday during a Harvard University John. F. Kennedy School of Government forum on the press and the presidency.

Play Video

Press Secretary Josh Earnest held his final White House press briefing on Tuesday morning with a surprise appearance by President Barack Obama. S...

Earnest said a stark difference between Mr. Trump and Democratic former President Barack Obama is Obama relished the opportunity to marshal facts to make an argument.

In contrast, when Mr. Trump is under pressure, Earnest said, his instinct is to create a distraction. He said thats what Mr. Trump did by accusing Obama of wiretapping his campaign while offering no proof. Earnest said no president has the authority to unilaterally wiretap someone.

Earnest also described the institution of the press as remarkably thin skinned.

Trump has used the tendency of the press to defend themselves to try to distract from the tough questions, he said.

Earnest said one reaction hes seen to the Trump presidency is a renewed interest in newspapers, television news and other news outlets.

He also said that the election of Mr. Trump is a reminder that elections matter -- a message he said he sometimes had trouble impressing on younger voters.

Somehow, I think Im going to have a little easier time making that case before the next election, he said.

Play Video

Josh Earnest took over as President Obama's White House press secretary in 2014. He's delivered more than 350 briefings in that role and has conf...

He said one of the biggest changes he has seen in the relationship between the White House and the press corps is new technology. He said cellphones combined with social media platforms puts intense pressure on reporters to push out every new tidbit of information instantly.

Despite the online technology, Earnest said, he still believes its important to have a daily White House press briefing to let reporters press the administration on the issues of the day.

Theres something thats symbolically important about the briefing -- the idea that there is a senior member of the White House staff who the president designates as the person who will every day prepare himself or herself to go out and speak on camera, on the record, and answer any question that any journalist can come up with, he said.

Earnest was White House press secretary under Obama from 2014 until Mr.Trump took office in January.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Here is the original post:
Ex-Obama spokesman believes Trump wants media to "be nice to ...

By Elura Nanos, Law Newz

Remember when Donald Trump threatened to sue the women who accused him of sexual assault for defamation? Or when he threatened to sue the New York Times? Or when he filed that ridiculous lawsuit against Bill Maher for joking that hed been the result of orangutan sex? Were used to Trumps crying slander! at every turn but what about former President Obama? Could he sue Donald Trump for accusing him of having wiretapped Trump Tower?

Lets face it, the idea of Barack Obama squaring off against Donald Trump in a courtroom would be nothing short of show-stopping, even if its just a civil courtroom, and even if its not for impeachment purposes. By now, Obama must have had his fill of unfounded Trump-inspired accusations about everything from his citizenship to his religion; he would hardly appear thin-skinned if he attempted to hold Trumps feet to the fire over claims of campaign corruption and misuse of power. Likely, though, even assuming Trump is lying about the wiretapping in the tweet below, theres not much of a case.

Defamation (libel, for anything written, such as Trumps tweet, and slander for anything spoken) has several requirements beyond simply proving that someone told a lie. For one, Plaintiff Obama would need to prove that the lie damaged his reputation. In many cases, the making of a negative false statement clearly damages the victims reputation; but when it comes to President Trump, things are markedly different. The combination of Trumps serious credibility problem with Obamas ever-skyward popularity simply does not add up to an obvious damage to reputation. Those who love Obama probably wouldnt be swayed by anything President Trump says, and the haters would surely remain haters. Kind of a net-zero on the whole reputation thing.

See the original post:
Could Obama Sue Trump for Libel Over Wiretapping Accusation ...

WASHINGTON Former President Barack Obama has a simple rule about engaging politically in the age of Donald Trump: Ignore the noise, respect the space, but dont let the direct mischaracterizations go unanswered.

Over the weekend, President 44 weighed in for the second time on his successors tenure, in this instance refuting the charge, leveled in the most Trumpian of fashions a pre-7 a.m. tweet that he had wiretapped Trump Tower prior to the election.

As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen, Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

Though Obama has long touted the virtues of former presidents remaining on the sidelines as current presidencies unfold, aides and associates said there wasnt much hesitation about issuing the statement. As one adviser said, there will be pushback when Trump is hitting at the integrity of the office of the presidency.

But those aides and associates also recognize that battles with Trump must be strategically chosen, because excessive engagement carries a price. Its not just about extending the courtesy of distance that President George W. Bush and much of his team showed back in 2009. Obama also is wary of suffocating the next generation of Democratic leaders by remaining personally involved.

In his mind, it is more about being strategic in the sense that it is hard to see how it is in anyones interests for him to become the face of the resistance or to be narrating the Trump presidency, said a source close to the former president. He knows he sucks up all the oxygen when he speaks. The lights are on us and the extent we take up the oxygen it affects the next generation of leaders rising.

From his preferred distance, however, Obama remains engaged. Though his public appearances suggest a former president blissfully enjoying his time away from politics kite surfing with Richard Branson or taking in a Broadway play aides said he has followed the developments of the Trump presidency closely, reading newspapers and occasionally watching news on TV.

Print more than broadcast, said the source close to Obama. He is not an avid Twitter user like his successor. But he is aware when a Trump flourish blossoms into a full-blown controversy on the social media platform, the source said. He occasionally follows, but never directs, the pushback that his former top staffers offer on Twitter.

Obamas also dispatched his team more than a dozen strong, working out of an office in the West End neighborhood of Washington to keep tabs on the unreported stories. There is a regular conference call for the Obama network, a meeting the ex-president attended with former aides a few weeks back, and ad hoc calls to Senate and House Democrats, state-based groups and grassroots organizations.

Jack Brockway/Handout . / Reuters

To these constituencies, Obama staff members have repeated the mantra that they feel obliged to give Trump some space to operate, even as the central legislative achievements of the Obama era come under threat. That both of Obamas interjections have come in the form of an emailed statement under a spokesmans name speaks to that.

For President Obama, this next chapter of his public service will focus on his core principle of grassroots engagement. This was previewed in his farewell address to the country, and has animated in his entire career in public life, said his spokesman, Eric Schultz.

What this means, in practical terms, is no overt policy criticisms. When Obama spoke out for the first time during the Trump era just 10 days into the new presidency the main thrust was to express solidarity with those protesting the first version of Trumps Muslim ban. But the impetus for the statement, as an aide explained, was that Trumps team had erroneously stated that the Obama administration had provided the logistical template for the ban itself.

The question Democrats are asking is whether such an approach is sustainable. While Obama may be invested in upholding norms, his former aides argue that those norms tend to be overstated. While Bush stayed mum during the Obama presidency, for example, many of his top aides were far from reserved, criticizing things both superficialand substantive. Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned just weeks into Obamas presidency that the new president was inviting a nuclear or biological attack on America.

Obamas inclination would be to follow the Bush model as a person, said Jen Psaki, Obamas former communications director. But, I think people are forgetting that there were a number of people on the Bush team who criticized Obama.

And then there is the issue of Trump, who shares no apparent commitment to the preservation of norms, and who has lashed out against his predecessor in ways that Obama for all his bemoaning of inheriting Bushs soured economy never did. Before Trump took office, Obamas main approach to his successor was that it made strategic sense to act diplomatically and maintain an open channel of communication in case one was needed. And for that, Trump routinely praised Obama for his temperament and counsel. He even seemed open to keeping elements of Obamas agenda, including health care.

But circumstances have changed since then, in ways that have forced Obama and his aides like the rest of the political universe to reconsider their posture. Trump himself has turned on Obama in recent days, with a series of attacks on his policy record, accusations of wiretapping, and an insistence that Obama, not he, is responsible for souring their relationship.

It is disappointing that [Obama] isnt affording President Trump the same courtesy that his predecessor showed toward him, Michael Short, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

Obamas aides and allies, for their part, have certainly noticed that for all the care they put into their approach to Trump, the result hasnt exactly been cordiality. As one former aide noted, during his first few weeks in office, Obama steadfastly refused to investigate Bushs authorization of torture, even under immense pressure from his base, while Trump called for a congressional investigation of Obama apparently based on a Breitbart article.

Look, Obama started with the attitude of, I care about the country and it is the patriotic duty to help my successor. And in the face of difficult circumstances hes maintained it as long as he can, said Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Democratic operative and lobbyist. Trump this weekend was provocative in the extreme, and even then Obama hasnt really responded. He gave a written statement off camera that was purely factual.

At some point, does he say, I have to talk directly to the American people and tell my story? History would tell you no, presidents dont do that. But we are in a place that is totally unique to American history.

This story has been updated with the White Houses statement.

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Obama Has A Bite-Your-Tongue Policy On Trump. It's Proving ...

By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump accused predecessor Barack Obama on Saturday of wiretapping him during the late stages of the 2016 election campaign, but offered no evidence for an allegation which an Obama spokesman said was "simply false".

Trump made the accusation in a series of early morning tweets just weeks into his administration and amid rising scrutiny of his campaign's ties to Russia.

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump wrote in one tweet. "I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!"

The remarkable tussle between the current and former presidents just 45 days since the handover of power is the latest twist in a controversy over ties between Trump associates and Russia that has dogged the early days of his presidency.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russia hacked and leaked Democratic emails during the election campaign as part of an effort to tilt the vote in Trump's favor. The Kremlin has denied the allegations.

Trump has accused officials in Obama's administration of trying to discredit him with questions about Russia contacts.

Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said it had been a "cardinal rule" of the Obama administration that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.

"Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," Lewis said in a statement.

The statement did not address the possibility that a wiretap of the Trump campaign could have been ordered by Justice Department officials.

Trump said the alleged wiretapping took place in his Trump Tower office and apartment building in New York, but there was "nothing found." The White House did not respond to a request to elaborate on Trump's accusations.

AIDES CAUGHT BY SURPRISE

Trump was spending the weekend at his Florida seaside resort, Mar-a-Lago. He was scheduled to meet with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly before a dinner with officials also including adviser Steve Bannon and White House Counsel Don McGahn, the White House said.

Amid a political storm, Sessions on Thursday announced he would stay out of any probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election after it emerged he met last year with Russia's ambassador, although he maintained he did nothing wrong by failing to disclose the meeting.

A Trump spokeswoman said the president spent part of Saturday "having meetings, making phone calls and hitting balls" at his golf course in West Palm Beach.

His supporters, meanwhile, staged small rallies in at least 28 of the country's 50 states, most of which passed off peacefully. But there were clashes in the famously left-leaning city of Berkeley, California, where protesters from both sides hit each other over the head with wooden sticks.

Trump's tweets caught his aides by surprise, with one saying it was unclear what the president was referring to.

Members of Congress said Trump's accusations require investigation or explanation.

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, described the allegations as serious and said the public deserved more information. He said in a statement it was possible that Trump had been illegally tapped, but, if so, the president should explain what sort of tap it was and how he knew about it.

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Trump's assertion a "spectacularly reckless allegation".

"If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the willingness of the nation's chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them," Schiff said in a statement.

Former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes strongly denied Trump's allegations: "No president can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you," Rhodes wrote on Twitter.

RUSSIA SANCTIONS

Trump's administration has come under pressure from Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional investigations into contacts between some members of his campaign team and Russian officials during his campaign.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he had no knowledge of any wiretapping but was "very worried" about the suggestion Obama had acted illegally and would also be concerned "if in fact the Obama administration was able to obtain a warrant lawfully about Trump campaign activity."

Several other Republicans again urged an investigation into a series of intelligence-related leaks.

Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and ordered Russian diplomats to leave the United States in December over the country's involvement in hacking political parties in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

Under U.S. law, a federal court would have to have found probable cause that the target of the surveillance is an "agent of a foreign power" in order to approve a warrant authorizing electronic surveillance of Trump Tower.

Several conservative news outlets and commentators have made allegations in recent days about Trump being wiretapped during the campaign, without offering any evidence.

Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned in February after revelations that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office.

Flynn had promised Vice President Mike Pence he had not discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russians, but transcripts of intercepted communications, described by U.S. officials, showed that the subject had come up in conversations between him and the Russian ambassador.

(Additional reporting by Melissa Fares in West Palm Beach, Florida, Richard Cowan and Steve Holland in Washington and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Richard Cowan; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Mary Milliken)

WASHINGTON Republicans cleared the first hurdle early on Thursday in their plan for a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system backed by President Donald Trump, despite Democratic concern that the cost of the bill and its impact on the budget remain unknown.

The state of Hawaii requested emergency court intervention on Wednesday to halt a revised executive order from President Donald Trump placing U.S. entry restrictions on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will meet with Main Street community bankers on Thursday to learn more about their difficulties in complying with the tougher Dodd-Frank financial regulations enacted after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

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Trump claims Obama wiretapped him during campaign; Obama ...