President Donald Trump was on the defense Friday morning as he responded to new reports about the ongoing Russia probe – specifically that special counsel Robert Mueller was allegedly scanning his tweets for possible evidence of obstruction of justice.
"Arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats obviously cannot find Collusion..." Trump tweeted.
"The only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats, so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) - the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country," the president added.
The series of three tweets concluded, "And so the Fake News doesn’t waste my time with dumb questions, NO. . . I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!"
The co-hosts of ABC's "The View" discussed these developments as one of Friday's "hot topics." Notably, comedian Joy Behar marveled at how Trump "dares to call her 'Crooked Hillary' still."
"When he is the biggest crook – I mean . . ." Behar trailed off, throwing her hands up in the air as her punchline. The audience exploded in applause.
It was then that the segment took a turn:
"Joy, I call her 'Crooked Hillary," co-host Meghan McCain revealed. "I do. When I'm talking about Hillary Clinton, I call her 'Crooked Hillary.'"
"And what do you call him?" Behar fired back. "'Lying Don?'"
"I call him President Trump," McCain replied. But then her voice began to falter, as she seemed to perhaps ponder a double standard. "Which, maybe – I mean – maybe, I shouldn't," she stammered. "There are even parts of me, as you know, that still react to the adages that he uses, I guess."
"'Crooked Hillary' really worked during the election," McCain added, "Because, I hate Hillary Clinton."
(Reminder: Trump has repeatedly disparaged her father, who is battling brain cancer.)
"That's out of a dictator's playbook," co-host Sunny Hostin said. "Make a big lie; say it over and over and over again; make everyone believe it."
It was a poignant exchange. For all the talk there is on the right about Clinton needing to move on from the 2016 election, why has the "Crooked Hillary" label continued to unfairly infringe her?
Often, it appears that the Trump administration uses such name-calling — and the non-existent, seemingly unending battle with Clinton that riles up its base — as a shiny object to distract from the real issues at hand.
Mere days ago, attorney general Jeff Sessions spoke to a conservative group's high school leadership summit in Washington. And, as my colleague Shira Tarlo reported, the crowd erupted into "Lock her up!" chants mid-speech.
"Lock her up," Sessions joined in as he giggled at the shouts from the crowd. "I heard that a long time over the last campaign," he added, before returning to his prepared remarks lambasting universities for molding a “generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes."
Trump "tweeted about Clinton (or her 2016 presidential campaign) by name (or nickname) 77 times" during his first year in office, according to Newsweek.
"That is an average of roughly one Clinton-themed tweet every 4.7 days, though the tweets have often appeared in angry bursts rather than evenly spaced out dispatches," the publication reported.
Those figures illustrate an unprecedented obsession with a defeated election rival.
As Newsweek posits, "It is difficult to imagine President Obama, for instance, spending his first year in office ranting and raving about John McCain."
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