According to Republicans, the person to blame for all of those contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia isn’t Donald Trump. Instead, it’s former president Barack Obama.
On Friday, Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna Romney McDaniel posted this on Twitter:
It’s beyond clear that Comey’s FBI authorized the spying of @realDonaldTrump’s campaign.
This scandal is worse than Watergate, and it was perpetrated by Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s administration.
We need a full accounting of what Obama and Biden knew and when they knew it.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 3, 2019
A day earlier, Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign released a video and email which erroneously alleged that Obama had issued a “stand down” order when he learned that Russia was meddling with the last presidential election.
The trifecata of lies was achieved when White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the Obama administration “actually didn’t do anything to stop interference in the election.”
But the facts are not on the side of the BS artists who so eagerly parrot talking points and fake news on behalf of the current, lawless president.
President Obama learned about the attempt by Russia to interfere in the election as early as July of 2016 and immediately held a briefing with key congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Obama wanted to make the information public, leading McConnell to threaten that he would take that as an attempt to rig the election on the behalf of the Democrats. McConnell told then-CIA Director John Brennan:
“I will condemn you and the Obama administration for trying to mess up this election.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Specifically, members of Trump’s family (Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner) and his campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, met with Russian nationals to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump and his minions first tried to assert that meeting was to discuss adoption, but that lie quickly fell apart and they then resorted to saying any campaign would have done the same.
So while Republicans may want to spin the fact that Donald Trump engaged in actions that stink of treason by blaming President Obama, their accusations only serve to prove just how desperate they are to hide their own treachery.
Next week, they’ll probably try to blame it all on Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Featured Image Via the BBC
