When does wiretapping not mean wiretapping?
When does wiretapping not mean wiretapping?
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When it is in quotation marks in a tweet by the President of the United States, of course!
So says the White House, walking back on Donald Trump’s incendiary claims that his predecessor had been spying on him.
“The president was very clear in his tweet that it was ‘wiretapping’.That spans a whole host of surveillance types of options,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Monday, gesturing to indicate quotation marks as he pronounced the word ‘wiretapping’.
“I think that there have been numerous reports from a variety of outlets over the last couple of months that seem to indicate that there has been different types of surveillance that occurred during the 2016 election.”
There was no nuance in the original Trump tweets, lambasting Barack Obama for wiretapping phones in Trump Tower.
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 4 mars 2017
It now seems it was the Obama administration that was being accused of some sort of surveillance.
A Congressional committee is still waiting for evidence to substantiate the claims.
Justice Department seeks more time on Trump wiretap evidence https://t.co/Oy3cg9mN2S pic.twitter.com/JCTpVVVNlO
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) 14 mars 2017
with Reuters