Trump’s tweets accusing Barack Obama over Russia leave him badly exposed

In recent days, President Donald Trump has adopted a fiendishly clever new line on the ongoing Russia probes: He will fully acknowledge that Russia did try to sabotage our election, but only in the context of blaming Barack Obama for it. Monday morning, Trump took this argument to a new level, testing an argument about potential Russian meddling that I had not heard before:

This is, in a sense, new. In a few tweets last week, Trump blasted the Obama administration for failing to act on what it had learned about Russia’s meddling efforts. But now Trump is explicitly offering a rationale for this, i.e., that Obama didn’t think Trump was going to win, and so didn’t bother doing anything about it, because it might have “rocked the boat,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

This line of argument leaves Trump deeply exposed, however. It represents an acknowledgement that the intelligence community had in fact concluded that Russia interfered with the purpose of helping Trump win. And it also exposes Trump to questions about what his administration (and Republicans) are prepared to do about expected Russian efforts to meddle in the next election.

Source: Donald Trump’s tweets accusing Barack Obama over Russia leave him badly exposed | The Independent