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Trump uses the IG report to attack his enemies while slamming author as Obama appointee

Trump uses the IG report to attack his enemies while slamming author as Obama appointee

Perhaps it was a late night of pre-Christmas parties. Perhaps impeachment anxiety led to an at-first sleepless night that led to a later than normal awakening this morning. But Donald Trump got a late start to his tweeting this morning compared to his usual pre-breakfast postings.

It didn’t take long for the president to get back up to speed, however, with a series of tweets designed to continue spreading the lies and misconceptions that his defense against Democratic efforts to remove him from office through impeachment primarily consist of.

Trump has gotten so into the weeds in his day to day attacks on his opposition that one has to be following every twist and turn of the news cycle to even have a clue about the subjects of his tweets.

Add your name to demand Republicans stop repeating Putin’s dangerous propaganda to defend Trump’s crimes!

Since the main focus of the president’s self-defense strategy has been to ignore the primary conclusion of the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation of the origins of the FBI inquiry into the links between the Trump campaign and Russia that it was initiated for perfectly legitimate reasons and wasn’t the result of a deep state conspiracy against Trump, it’s not surprising to find that most of the president’s tweets this morning concern his attempts to discredit that conclusion by the inspector general by focusing on the slopiness of the FBI’s procedural errors in obtaining FISA warrants to investigate Trump campaign staff with Russian contacts.

Sadly, many people who only get their news through conservative media and Trump’s own tweets won’t appreciate the irony of his tweets attacking the inspector general’s report and then citing it as the basis for essentially calling House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), former FBI Director James Comey, and Hillary Clinton liars and cheats.

Trump began with an attack on Congressman Schiff that said a memo he wrote is contradicted by the IG report.

He cites the Inspector General’s findings again in this retweet from Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel complaining that Hillary Clinton was essentially doing in 2016 what Trump has been accused of in the Ukraine scandal, that has lead to his imminent impeachment in a massive gaslighting act of projection.

Of course, distracting the public from his own crimes with “what-about-isms” is a regular feature of Trump’s social media strategy.

He later again refers to the IG report in a retweet from another WSJ reporter who quotes Inspector General Horowitz as saying that his report did not vindicate the FBI Director fired by Trump, James Comey.

Yet after using the IG report like a cudgel against his opponents by citing its negative findings of FBI inattention to the strict procedures involved in obtaining FISA warrants — findings that, according to the inspector general, nevertheless had no effect on the legitimacy of the investigation into a Trump campaign that found several of its senior officials convicted of crimes in its wake — Trump goes on to undermine the credibility of the report he cited as fact by attacking Horowitz for being an Obama appointee and by repeating his accusations that his predecessor was behind a purposeful espionage campaign against Trump.

Unfortunately, most people will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Trump’s tweets and won’t even notice the complete logical inconsistency in his calculated spread of misleading misdirection regarding the Inspector General report that he cherrypicks to suit his own aims.

With one lie after another, all easily demolished by intelligent analysis, Trump mounts his impeachment defense hoping that the constant drone of false assertions worms its way into the brains of the general public too busy struggling to make their way through their daily lives to pay close enough attention to realize just how utterly ridiculous his basic premise is.

That premise — that the Inspector General’s report is true only when it supports his conspiracy theories, but that its ultimate finding of no bias in the FBI investigation of his campaigns ties to Russia (despite the cadre of NY FBI agents assigned to the Hillary Clinton email investigation who were actively supporting Trump) and the perfect legitimacy of the launch of the probe is unsupported — is all Trump has when faced with evidence of his crimes and corruption.

Expect him to be tweeting the same basic message until his anticipated Senate trial is complete.

Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.

Vinnie Longobardo
Managing Editor
Vinnie Longobardo is the Managing Editor of Occupy Democrats. He's a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.

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