President Obama’s mic drop response to Donald Trump’s false wiretap claim

| 10:05 pm EST March 8, 2017
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Donald Trump’s false claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower is so absurd on its face, Obama has hesitated to even so much as dignify it with a direct response. The media has since taken Trump to school about how wiretap warrants actually work, and the response on Twitter suggests the public thinks Trump has gone totally off the deep end. But now Obama has indirectly responded, and it represents a mic drop moment.

Trump’s own White House has spent the week struggling to figure out how to approach Trump’s false claim, as it tries to fend off questions about what evidence he was basing his supposed claim on, or if he truly did make the accusation based on a Breitbart tabloid article, as many have asserted. Even some Republicans in Congress, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have suggested that Trump either put up or shut up when it comes to evidence backing up his accusation.

It’s also handed Democrats in Congress the opportunity to say yes, let’s go ahead and investigate Donald Trump’s claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped, and let’s see if it ultimately leads us back to the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s illicit Russia connections. But the most striking response has now come from President Obama himself, who appears to have allowed one of his associates to anonymously relay his thoughts to NBC News. Here’s the money quote:

“The source told NBC News the former president “is much more concerned by President Trump kicking people off their health insurance, not staffing the government, not being prepared for a crisis, rolling back regulations so that corporations can pollute the air and water and letting mentally unstable people buy guns with no problems whatsoever.'”

By making Donald Trump’s false accusation look small and silly, and by using it to highlight all of the things that Trump has gotten wrong since taking office, Barack Obama has managed to pull off a mic drop moment without even having to speak about the matter directly.