March 6, 2017

Mark Levin – the hatriot talk show host who reportedly was the source for Donald Trump's notion that then-President Barack Obama wiretapped him – got more than 12 minutes on Fox & Friends this morning to yell about “police state tactics” being used against “the victim” Trump. But when asked how much Obama was involved, Levin replied, “I’m not Nostradamus here, I just think that we ought to find out.”

With even Trump's aides refusing to defend his claim, I can understand why Levin would feel an overwhelming need to justify himself. And of course, the Trump Cheerleaders also known as Fox & Friends were ready to do everything possible to help.

So Levin spent the first six minutes of the interview sifting through his so-called evidence. Heck, liberals can’t even finish a thought on Fox, much less get six minutes to orate.

PolitiFact has an excellent deconstruction of the claims which were echoed by Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on ABC News (and rated false by PolitiFact). But without wading into the weeds of the complicated facts, let me just point out that not one of the three Fox cohosts questioned – much less challenged – a single word Levin said.

Instead, cohost Pete Hegseth – the star of another Trump rehab effort that day – gushed, “You lay out a devastating case based on public documents, as you point out, and not right-wing sources but mainstream, left-stream sources.”

It wasn’t until 10 minutes in that someone asked about Obama’s involvement. You know, the thing that Trump tweeted about with an unequivocal claim. That was when cohost Abby Huntsman asked Levin, “Do you think former President Obama was involved in this and if so how much was he involved?”

Levin’s reply? “I’m not Nostradamus here, I just think that we ought to find out. But I will tell you this: He’s more involved than he says.”

In other words, Levin had no idea how much Obama was involved. In fact, as Raw Story noted, Levin had no concrete proof Obama was involved at all.

Not surprisingly, not one of the cohosts pointed out that not even the dubious source of Trump’s baseless claim could back it up.

Yet cohost (and supposedly objective correspondent) Ed Henry teamed up with Levin to help further the “Obama operatives are sabotaging Trump” narrative.

HENRY: [Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer] has been trying to block as many Trump nominations as he can and slow the process … Now that Jeff Sessions has recused himself [from any investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia], the person in charge here is going to be a career bureaucrat. … You have people inside Justice – some, maybe who have been trying to undermine President Trump who are now in charge of this investigation. And the chances of Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate confirming the nomination of the deputy attorney general, a Trump loyalist, now seems nil. So they have seized control of this investigation, haven’t they?

LEVIN: They not only did that, they have squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy and they’re buying more and more time to do that.

Not one of the four people indicated a hint of concern about Trump’s ties to Russia.

Hegseth closed by saying, “Mark, you laid out a devastating case. We know now why they call you the Great One.”

Originally published at Newshounds.us

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