After an ostensibly solemn ceremony during which Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a “Veteran Wellness, Empowerment, and Suicide Prevention Task Force” within the Veterans’ Administration, it appeared that the President’s mind was elsewhere, and with good reason.
House Committees spanning the entire range of disciplines, from Oversight to Intelligence, Ways and Means to the Judiciary, are all committing part of their mission in the 116th Congress to investigations of the President, his campaign, and the crimes surrounding his election and administration. Already, many of them have called witnesses, demanded documents, and expressed their desire to meet with current and former officials to request testimony.
Understandably, that has the President tying himself in knots. This morning, Trump tweeted about it once again with a simple two-word message:
PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2019
In fact, last month, the President seemed to be complaining that Republicans in Congress had not forced former President Barack Obama to be subjected to the kind of questioning his administration has endured — and will continue to:
….The Dems and their committees are going “nuts.” The Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government. I hear other committee heads will do the same thing. Even stealing people who work at White House! A continuation of Witch Hunt!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2019
But after today’s ceremony, Trump seemed to imply that Obama had been the subject of the same sort of “harassment.” Trump falsely claimed, in fact, that Obama had refused to comply — apparently asserting that as an excuse for him to avoid compliance as well:
It’s a disgrace to our country. I’m not surprised that it’s happening. Basically, they’ve started the campaign. So the campaign begins. Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing health care, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games.”
In an apparent reference to the mixture of probes of the Obama administration that were about ten percent legitimate oversight and ninety percent partisan warfare — think Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, or IRS political bias — Trump said that Obama “didn’t give one letter. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t give one letter of the requests.”
That’s untrue, of course, as Obama ran one of the most transparent administrations in American history.
But let’s see how this works out for Trump.
Featured image via screen capture
