From the Left

/

Politics

Trump's blame game is wearing very thin

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

After news broke that his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's long-time associate, Rick Gates, had been indicted, President Donald Trump responded by tweet with a familiar response: Investigate Hillary Clinton.

"Sorry," he tweeted after Monday's 12-count federal indictment was unsealed, "but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????"

Translation: "Manafort? Manafort? Do I know a Manafort? So when are you going to arrest Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats?"

Blame Hillary First has been a standard White House response in the days leading up to the first Russia-gate indictment. "If any collusion took place it was with the Clintons," said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in response to the indictments.

Trump has charged that the Clinton Foundation received "pay for play" donations from Russians in order for then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton to sell a uranium mining company to a Russian one and "gave Russia 20 percent of American uranium."

But, even though the Clinton Foundation received enormous donations and Bill Clinton received enormous speaking fees from leaders involved in the deal, the Washington Post Fact Checker and the fact-checking website Snopes.com found no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved personally in the deal, which may not even have risen to the level of her office.

 

But as we have seen repeatedly, Trump and his allies are not about to let anything as trivial as facts get in the way of a good slam at their favorite targets, like Hillary Clinton.

Devin Nunes, a California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, plans to look into Clinton's role in a 2010 uranium deal that became a favorite attack line by candidate Trump. Fine. I would not stand in the way of officeholder's accountability to public scrutiny. But that doesn't excuse Team Trump from similar scrutiny.

Yet three minutes after that "Crooked Hillary" tweet, Trump added this: "Also, there is NO COLLUSION!"

Well, not so fast. Even as Trump tapped out that presidential tweet, newer news broke: The FBI has evidence of -- Surprise! Surprise! -- collusion.

...continued

swipe to next page

(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

Tom Stiglich Chris Britt Kevin Siers Bill Bramhall David M. Hitch Mike Beckom