Never Mind

Have you noticed that the fire storm of accusations by Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media about "Russian collusion" involving Trump operatives have largely evaporated. Could it be that all of this focus on the Russian might lead investigators to places that might be embarrassing for the Dems and their hamsters.

The change in focus began, I think, with Trump's now infamous tweet in which he accused Barack Obama of "wire tapping" his administration. The media frenzy that followed the tweet was remarkable in its viciousness, it vacuity, and the remarkable lack of interest in determining whether there was any truth to the accusation. Trump's tweet was dismissed out-of-hand and condemned by elites of both parties.

There's only one problem. It looks like the substance of the tweet is true. Last night the Democrat-friendly Washington Post published an exclusive that indicated that the Obama administration did, in fact, get a FISA court warrant to investigate Carter Page, an informal advisor to Trump. They write:

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

To say that WaPo is anti-Trump is a understatement, so it's no surprise that they conclude that their exclusive indicates coordination between Trump and the Russians.

The progressive worldview espoused by media outlets like WaPo is often flawed by a lack of critical thinking. That's exemplified in the conclusion that the Russians wanted to help elect Donald Trump. John Hinderaker considers this when he writes:

I find it hard to believe that Russia’s rulers, from Vladimir Putin on down, wanted to help elect a president who vowed to rebuild America’s dwindling military strength, and to put America first, in place of an administration that was consistently supine in the face of Russian aggression and was borderline anti-American. Possibly Putin and his advisers are that dumb, but I doubt it.

Recall that everyone, including Hillary Clinton herself, indicated that her administration would generally continue the "successes" of the Obama administration. Wouldn't those "successes" include the acquiescence to the Russian invasion of Crimea, Russian support of Bashar Assad in Syria, Russian coordination with Iran in the Middle East (all, BTW, counter to the national interests of the U.S.) mitigate against Russian support for Trump? Oh well, never mind.

Hinderaker doesn't pull any punches when he writes:

We are now starting to get a picture of how sinister this whole Democratic Party misinformation campaign is. Through the last half of 2016, the Obama administration was desperately searching for evidence of some link between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. They went to the length of seeking (twice, reportedly) and finally obtaining a FISA order that allowed them to spy on at least one insignificant Trump associate.

In addition, we now know that Susan Rice headed up an operation whereby raw NSA intelligence was sifted for names of Trump associates, no doubt in hopes of uncovering dirt of some sort. And we also know that these efforts came up dry. The Obama administration found no compromising information about Trump or any of his associates.

Nevertheless, ever since the Inauguration the Democratic Party, especially its press wing in Washington and New York, has relentlessly pushed the Trump/Russia story. What story? There isn’t one. But that hasn’t stopped Democrats in the press from talking about little else for the last three months.

The Trump/Russia story beginning to change, and not in a direction that will make Democrats and their trained media hamsters happy.