2017 Mar 6^th

Donald Trump is stirring the political pot with his recent tweet that President Obama had Trump’s office in Trump Tower bugged. The pot hardly needed any additional agitation as it had not recovered from Attorney General Sessions’ forced recusal of himself from any involvement in events prior to the election. Trump is reported to have been in an enormously high dudgeon at that news. Even after Trump got to Mar-a-Lago, it required Steve Bannon to fly down and make nice with him. While he wouldn’t let Bannon fly down with him on AF-1, he did let Bannon fly back with him as long as he got on through the back entrance, Sad!

Trump’s assertion that his office was bugged had a source. He must have seen some of Mark Levin’s typical paranoid comments about President Obama when they were aired on Fox News. Levin runs a far right three-hour daily talk show out of a Texas radio station. He is not known for being careful with the truth, which gives him an immediate affiliation with our new president.

The president, any president, does not have the power to order the bugging of anyone. The best he can do is to obtain a FISA court’s order based on evidence that a foreign power is involved and only then can bugging occur. Our intelligence agencies in a position to know about such court orders insist no such request was made to any FISA court. Naturally, the right wing pundits claim these folks are all liars.  But suppose that there were permissions given to wiretap. Why would that be a surprise? There is a mountain of evidence that many in the Trump camp, from Paul Manafort to Mike Flynn to Carter Page even to Donald Trump Jr., have been paid by Russians to give speeches. Isn’t that enough evidence to get a wiretap on Trump’s communication systems? If they refused, they would be derelict in their duty to protect the country from foreign interference. (Unless you assume that Russia has only our best interests at heart.)

Trump’s principle advisor, Steve Bannon, claims his goal is “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” He is well on his way to achieving that goal. If deconstruction means taking apart, then the chaos of the Trump administration must be a delight to Steve Bannon. He really lucked out when tied himself to Trump. Trump’s initial edict to halt immigration was quickly struck down by the courts. The entire effort was embarrassingly naïve; no wonder; it was produced by a 32 year old, Steve Miller, with no experience and who was given no oversight in its preparation. No wonder it was a mess.

Trump’s first executive order was issued Jan. 29 and when the courts struck it down he declared that the nation was at desperate risk of terrorists flooding in here unless something could be done at once. Not so fast, there were golf dates, weekends at Mar-a-Lago and other important presidential bits of business, so it took until today, March 6^th to save the country from these terrorists. In the meantime how many terrorist acts have been perpetrated on our poor defenseless country? Not one!