Trump Continues to Push False “Spy” Narrative, in Spite of Evidence

We may as well face the facts that President Trump is going to continue on with this falsehood until either the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election finally wraps up, or his term ends.

It doesn’t matter how many voices, either from our nation’s intelligence community or Congress speak up, do everything short of pulling out slide shows and finger puppets to explain what happened and why there is currently an investigation into the election, and specifically, members of his campaign team. Donald Trump will continue to lash out on social media and to any friendly outlet about his victimization at the hands of shadowy government forces, out to bring him down.

Early Friday morning, he was at it, again.

“The Democrats are now alluding to the concept that having an Informant placed in an opposing party’s campaign is different than having a Spy, as illegal as that may be,” he tweeted. “But what about an ‘Informant’ who is paid a fortune and who ‘sets up’ way earlier than the Russian Hoax?”

“Can anyone even imagine having Spies placed in a competing campaign, by the people and party in absolute power, for the sole purpose of political advantage and gain?” he wrote in a second tweet. “And to think that the party in question, even with the expenditure of far more money, LOST!”

As was reported earlier in the week, Trump has chosen to use the word “spy,” or “spies” because he thinks it plays well with his base.

He’s in it for the ratings.

It is likely no coincidence that Friday’s manic tweetstorm is coming on the heels of two highly classified meetings between lawmakers and top officials with the Justice Department on Thursday. The discussion at hand covered the use of a confidential informant with the FBI – Stefan A. Halper – who intervened in the earliest months of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s 2016 activities.

Halper talked to three Trump campaign associates. He was never embedded with the campaign, as Trump and his surrogates have repeatedly suggested, nor is their evidence that he was paid by the FBI to find dirt on Donald Trump.

There was no need to, if, as Trump insists, they were out to get him. Nobody expected him to win. Not the pollsters, the pundits, or the campaign.

Certainly not the Hillary Clinton team. Every report coming out after-the-fact of the election is that she and her campaign team were absolutely stunned that there would be no “Madame President” in her immediate future.

After the meetings, congressional Democrats said they saw “no evidence” that the FBI placed a spy in the Trump campaign.

They’re not the only ones.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emerged from that same meeting, having reached the same conclusion: the special counsel should be allowed to go on with its investigation.

Democrats were also concerned about White House lawyer Emmet Flood’s attendance at the two meetings, with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) noting that his presence “only underscores [that] the President’s legal team expects to use information gleaned improperly from the Justice Department or the President’s allies in Congress to their legal advantage.”

And that very well may be the case. It was certainly unusual.

Trump’s continued temper tantrums are not helping his case. He’s usually spewing the last thing he saw on Fox News, with no thought to the fact that they’re playing for ratings, too, and reality TV isn’t real life.