The real reason Donald Trump is suddenly so afraid of James Clapper
This morning Donald Trump woke up and launched into a surreal rant about Dr. Ronny Jackson and Senator Jon Tester, and suffice it to say that he was predictably on the side of his own recently withdrawn nominee. But then Trump went in a different direction entirely. Suddenly he was ranting about James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has long been no fan of Trump, but today Trump seemed to finally decide that Clapper is a threat to him.
Yesterday, Trump’s puppets on the House Intelligence Committee released a comically phony report which falsely exonerated Trump and his associates in the Trump-Russia scandal, while falsely incriminating some of Trump’s detractors. This report wasn’t taken seriously by any serious people, and it’s already largely been forgotten. One of the false claims in that report was that James Clapper leaked information to CNN and then lied about it. This morning, Trump exploded about this supposed revelation.
Trump attributed Fox News by name in his tweet about Clapper, so we know where he got his false information from. By the way, this proved that Trump didn’t even bother to read the report yesterday, and instead waited for his favorite propaganda network to interpret it for him. But the upshot is this: Trump fears what Clapper can do to him, and thus he seized the opportunity to repeat false accusations about him.
We know that Trump fears people like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Sally Yates because they’re key witnesses in the obstruction of justice charges against him. What’s remarkable is that James Clapper retired just as Trump was taking office, meaning Clapper was not a witness to Trump’s obstruction antics. Clapper has testified that he largely kept a distance from the Trump-Russia probe even when he was on the job, because he was going to retire soon. So what does Trump know that we don’t?
Donald Trump generally only goes after current and former nonpartisan government officials with this kind of viciousness if he thinks they’re witnesses who can testify against him. It sounds like someone in Trump’s camp has tipped him off that James Clapper knows more about Trump’s crimes than he’s publicly let on. Our guess is that one of Trump’s puppets on the House Intel Committee tipped him off.
