Trump fires off new Twitter tirade in response to report on Fox "fake" News.

Wow, @FoxNews just reporting big news. Source: "Official behind unmasking is high up. Known Intel official is responsible. Some unmasked....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2017

..not associated with Russia. Trump team spied on before he was nominated." If this is true, does not get much bigger. Would be sad for U.S.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2017

And then just this morning Trump followed up with this.

The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the leakers.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017

The impetus for Trump's hyperactive tweets seems to be this story from Fox News claiming that they have a source who located the "very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world" individual who targeted Donald Trump.

The "source" also made this claim: 

“Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one."

The problem for Trump of course is that Fox News is the World Net Daily of cable news and they are notorious for having "experts" on their programs who are later discredited and shown to be charlatans.

In fact they already temporarily suspended Judge Andrew Napolitano for making a very similar claim just last month.

But Trump doesn't care, as far as he is concerned any new outlet that back him up is a good news source, and all others are "fake news."

Donald Trump: "I'm president and you're not."

Trump playing in a truck.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Presidents usually choose their words carefully, the result of personal discipline and careful vetting by White House staff. President Trump is an exception. 

In an interview with Time magazine, published on Thursday, Mr. Trump veers from topic to topic, praising himself and dismissing his critics in language that sometimes is hard to follow.

Here are some of those excerpts.

On his claim that Obama wiretapped him:

Why do you say that I have to apologize? I’m just quoting the newspaper, just like I quoted the judge the other day, Judge Napolitano. I quoted Judge Napolitano, just like I quoted Bret Baier. I mean Bret Baier mentioned the word wiretap. Now he can now deny it, or whatever he is doing, you know. But I watched Bret Baier, and he used that term. I have a lot of respect for Judge Napolitano, and he said that three sources have told him things that would make me right. I don’t know where he has gone with it since then. But I’m quoting highly respected people from highly respected television networks. 

It does not seem to bother him at all that one of Napolitano's sources later said that the judge misquoted him or that Napolitano lost his job at Fox News over this.

Concerning those "terrorist attacks" in Sweden:

I am talking about Sweden. I’m talking about what Sweden has done to themselves is very sad, that is what I am talking about. That is what I am talking about. You can phrase it any way you want. A day later they had a horrible, horrible riot in Sweden and you saw what happened. I talked about Brussels. I was on the front page of The New York Times for my quote. I said Brussels is not what it used to be, very sad what has happened to Brussels. I was absolutely lambasted. A short time later they had the major attack in Brussels. One year ago today. Exactly one year ago today. And then people said, “You know, Trump was right.” 

So now he is Nostradamus, predicting events BEFORE they happen?

Trump also apparently knows the meaning of life:

I happen to be a person that knows how life works. I said I was going to win the election, I won the election. In fact, I was number one the entire route, in the primaries. From the day I announced, I was number one. And The New York Times and CNN and all of them, they did these polls, which were extremely bad and they turned out to be totally wrong, and my polls showed I was going to win. We thought we were going to win the night of the election.

Actually the reporting I have seen demonstrated that Trump did NOT know he was going to win, and in fact was caught by surprise when he did.

And finally:

I inherited a mess with jobs. Despite the statistics, you know, my statistics are even better, but they are not the real statistics because you have millions of people that can’t get a job, O.K. And I inherited a mess on trade. I mean we have many, you can go up and down the ladder. But that’s the story. Hey look, in the meantime, I guess, I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not. You know. Say hello to everybody, O.K.? 

"I can't be doing badly, because I'm president and you're not." I don;t even know how to respond to that.

Actually as we know Trump did NOT inherit a mess, he inherited a country that had already been rescued from the LAST unfit president to hold office.

Let's face it folks, the Russians convinced a lot of really stupid people to elect a psychotic toddler.

And now we are stuck with him.

Well, at least for the time being.

Andrew Napolitano, the source for the false claim that Britain bugged Donald Trump for President Obama, has been kicked off Fox News indefinitely.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano is being kept off the air indefinitely amid the controversy over his unverified claims that British intelligence wiretapped Trump Tower at the behest of former President Obama. 

Fox News did not respond to inquiries about Napolitano’s status Monday. Napolitano was conspicuously missing from the network’s coverage of the confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch — an event in which he typically would have played a significant role. He has not been on the air since Thursday. 

People familiar with the situation who could speak only on the condition of anonymity said Napolitano is not expected to be on Fox News Channel any time in the near future. Napolitano was not available for comment.

Wow, when you are too full of shit for Fox News, you know you are REALLY full of shit.

But here's the thing, Fox News is the source for MANY of Donald Trump's false statements.

As the Daily Show pointed out last night, not only is Fox News virtually the only cable news outlet that can interview Trump these days, but they also the ONLY news outlet he seems to think is not "fake news."

Which is hysterical since most of us know that Fox News is often ground zero for fake news.

However, like Trump, they are in complete denial that they are essentially the bullshit network. (Except of course for Shepard Smith who seems inoculated against the bullshit.)

And that makes statements like this seem to be dripping with irony.

O'Reilly: Trump Would Be Wise to 'Embrace Only Facts' in the Future https://t.co/yA7gLPp0cA (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/yMqEqwHbcl

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 21, 2017

Yes, Donald Trump certainly needs to "embrace the facts."

But do you know what might help with that?

If his go to news outlet did it first. 

Sure firing Judge Napolitano is a good start, but what about Sean Hannity? Jeanne Pirro? Everybody on Fox and Friends? And yes Bill O'Reilly himself?

The facts are that there are rarely actual verifiable facts on Fox News. And when there are they are twisted to fit their conservative agenda.

Personally I would fire the whole crew, with the exception of Shepard Smith who actually seems to have journalistic integrity.

The false accusation that President Obama had British intelligence spy on Donald Trump actually originated on a Russian news outlet. Everybody act surprised.

Larry C. Johnson

Media Matters was the first to report this connection: 

On RT, Larry C. Johnson Alleged That Obama “Collu[ded] Overseas With Britain’s Own GCHQ” To Spy On Trump. Appearing on a March 6 broadcast on state-sponsored Russian news network RT, Larry C. Johnson, credited as a “former CIA analyst and State Department official,” alleged that “there was some collusion overseas” between U.S. intelligence and “Britain’s own GHCQ (sic)” “to derail the candidacy of Donald Trump.” Citing “very good friends,” Johnson alleged that GCHQ “actually passed” information “to John Brennan, and it was disseminated within the U.S. government.” Johnson closed the RT interview by claiming former Obama administration officials involved in the collusion could face "criminal charges," specifically sedition. From the March 6 interview: 

NEIL HARVEY (HOST): Let’s bring in former CIA analyst and State Department official Larry Johnson, joins me live over the line. Very good afternoon to you, Larry. We’ve heard it said that these are really serious accusations by some guests we’ve had on so far. What’s your assessment of what Donald Trump’s had to said -- how big a deal is this? 

LARRY JOHNSON: I think it’s a huge deal. The problem is Trump probably shouldn’t have done this via Twitter, because to call it that it was a wiretap is technically inaccurate. And the denials by the Obama people are like Bill Clinton asking what the meaning of “is” is with respect to was oral sex a sexual act. In this case, I understand from very good friends that what happened was both Jim Clapper and John Brennan at CIA were intimately involved in trying to derail the candidacy of Donald Trump. That there was some collusion overseas with Britain’s own GHCQ (sic). That information that was gathered from GHCQ (sic) was actually passed to John Brennan, and it was disseminated within the U.S. government. This dissemination was illegal. Donald Trump is in essence correct that the intelligence agencies and some in the law enforcement community on the side of the FBI were in fact illegally trying to access, monitor his communications with his aides, and with other people. All of this with an end to try to destroy and discredit his presidency. I don’t think there will be any doubt of that.

That was then repeated by Andrew Napolitano on Fox and Friends.

That was then repeated by Sean Spicer during a White House Press briefing: 

Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement — quote — Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply by having two people saying to them the president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump’s conversations, involving President-elect Trump, he’s able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot.

And just like that this bullshit accusation became national news.

The New York Times followed up and attempted to make some sense of all of this:  

Mr. Napolitano, who keeps a residence in Manhattan at Trump International Hotel & Tower on Central Park West, did not respond to inquiries on Friday.

But Mr. Johnson, who was himself once a Fox News contributor, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Napolitano called him on Friday and requested that he speak to The New York Times. Mr. Johnson said he was one of the sources for Mr. Napolitano’s claim about British intelligence.

Actually it appears he was the ONLY source.

And just WHO is Larry C. Johnson?

Well funny you should ask:

Mr. Johnson became infamous in political circles after he spread false rumors in 2008 that Michelle Obama had been videotaped using a slur against Caucasians.

Remember that?

Johnson also released a carefully edited John Kerry interview in 2013 to accuse him of war crimes.

This also from Media Matters:  

On September 7, 2013, Johnson posted on his website No Quarter an article alleging that then-Secretary of State John Kerry “is a self-admitted rapist,” pointing to audio allegedly from a 1971 broadcast of The Dick Cavett Show. Johnson’s audio had Kerry appearing to say that he “raped for pleasure” during the Vietnam War. Actual video of that episode shows that Kerry never said that. Some time after a commenter noted that “the audio is obviously doctored” and linked to the original clip and a transcript, the post was deleted.

THIS is who the White House was quoting whether they knew it or not.

In other words Russia's propaganda is still affecting politics in this country even months after the election.

Believe it or not Judge Napolitano of Fox News gives the best defense of Hillary Clinton that I have heard yet.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:  

All of Trump's surrogates have been wielding these past incidents like a hammer, making wild and unfounded accusations to fill time slots and distract viewers, and amidst the screaming the actual charges are rarely fact-checked by cable TV hosts.

Judge Napolitano said, "The three that are accusing him [Bill] are cases that were never proved or alleged many, many years after the series of events." 

He continued, "The only case Bill Clinton paid out any money was after the case was dismissed because they feared it would be reinstated, he was the sitting president." 

Kelly said, "Paula Jones settlement sounds like a nuisance value settlement, he pad 850K, the vast majority was legal fees, only 200K went to her." 

She continued, "That's what you do to get rid of these matters when you're President." 

Judge Napolitano said, "We all know they all had a serious problem with proof, which is why none of them ever were laid out in front of judge and jury."

I am almost slack jawed to find Napolitano defending Hillary in this way, and that he is clearly backed up by Megyn Kelly, who is also a lawyer and knows about these things.

And of course they are correct that these are old cases that have already been litigated and found to be lacking in evidence.

The Trump surrogates can bring up these moldy old cases all day long if they want, but the fact is that the allegations against Trump have that new scandal smell and there appears to be a new one every few hours.

And they seem to be getting grosser by the day.