WH spokesperson on Trump wiretap claim: “He’s made very clear what he believes, and he’s asking we get down to the bottom of this.” pic.twitter.com/gTVLtszS1L
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 5, 2017
If anyone hoped the White House would trot out Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Sunday morning to clean up Trump’s baseless accusations that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower … yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen. Instead, they delivered (to ABC News) Spicer’s deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who managed to avoid an overly combative air. However, she was not successful in her attempts to soften Trump’s claims, which he snagged from a Breitbart story that parroted a right-wing radio host’s conspiracy theory about a “silent coup” on behalf of Obama.
Right away, Sanders wasn’t convinced by Obama’s unequivocal denial that “neither [I] nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” She didn’t offer any proof, but rather, she simply asserted that Obama “doesn’t have the best track record.” So, host Martha Raddatz demanded to know why Trump’s unfounded accusations weren’t posed as a hypothetical but as if they were rooted in fact: “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower.”
Then, the walk-back attempt commenced. Raddatz didn’t let Sanders get away with her claims, but the latter sure made a valiant effort:
Sanders: “I think that this is, again, something that if this happened, Martha…”
Raddatz: “If, if, if, if. Why is the president saying that it did happen?”
Sanders: “I think he is going off information he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. The American people have a right to know if this took place.”
Raddatz: “The president believes it is true?”
Sanders: “His tweet speaks for itself. He’s talking about, could this have happened?”
Raddatz: “He’s saying — once again, he said it did happen.”
At that point, Sanders alluded to the White House’s Sunday morning statement about how Trump is demanding that Congress investigate his baseless accusations against the Obama White House. As the official White House rep on this issue, Sanders favored a more diplomatic turn of phrase than her big boss (“potential that they had for a complete abuse of power”) but unwittingly let fly that there’s Trump pettiness at work, too:
“All we’re asking is we get the same level of look into the Obama administration and the potential that they had for a complete abuse of power that they’ve been claiming that we’ve done over the last six months … And time and time again, there’s no evidence or wrongdoing. The FBI says this is B.S. Yes, you guys continue to hammer and hammer of some false idea and false narrative that there’s something there when, frankly, there just isn’t.”
Well, Sanders falls right in line with the narrative-shifting maneuvers of Kellyanne Conway, although she’s much more subtle. Sanders didn’t make matters worse for Trump this morning, but she didn’t fix anything either. So, we’ll probably see more of her in the future.
(Via ABC News)