The president and his cronies are using Michael Flynn’s “unmasking” to spin another myth in real time.
…the list has already been seized on by promoters of President’s Trump “Obamagate” claim. This is a false claim that Obama was involved during the presidential transition in an effort to unfairly smear Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his conversations with Kislyak. But after public attacks on the case by Trump, the Justice Department, at the behest of Attorney General William Barr, is trying to drop the case. And Trump boosters are already misrepresenting the new information to bolster their phony claim.
Michael Flynn’s shady Russia dealing that became part of another scandal that plagued Trump. Biden, Trump says, was a key player in the unmasking of Flynn from the intelligence monitoring the Russian ambassador. It isn’t a new story, in fact, three years ago it was revealed that former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice was the one who ordered the unmasking. Three years later, Trump’s team has decided it’s a scandal and Biden is to blame.
According to the Associated Press, however, the unmasking of someone is so frequently done that Trump has ordered the unmasking of over 36,000 people while in office. The numbers are significantly higher than Obama.
Frum concludes that Trump has “lost the plot” because “he’s talking about things most voters could not even understand, let alone care about.” It’s true that most voters aren’t interested in delving into the intricacies of how the investigation into the whole Trump-Russia affair was both launched and conducted. But that misses the point of what they see when Obama’s name is invoked.
Here's A Thing... 