YET ANOTHER KINK IN THE WIRE

Here's an additional thought on the Trump claim of wiretapping. (See UNCROSSING THE WIRES, from a few days ago.)

My current theory is that Trump had been shown proof the CIA (or NSA) picked up him and/or his people in the taps of foreign nationals, and he'd misunderstood exactly who got tapped—concluding he'd been tapped.

And made his famous Tweet about it.

Trump then seemed to forget how he'd "found out" about the tapping, mainly because he'd been told not to reveal this (possibly) illegal leak of national security secrets.

Now I'm thinking Trump didn't make the mistake about who had been tapped. He understood it was the other guy who got tapped.

(Though maybe he sees little important difference: "Who cares who got tapped? Tapped is tapped, period. Am I right?")

Ah, but what if he concluded Obama purposely tapped those foreign nationals in order to capture statements made by Trump or his people? Possibly even directed those foreign nationals to reach out to Trump, etc., so tapes could be made.

That would be devious indeed. That would be "sick."

It might also explain the ending of the original Tweet, where Trump said Obama was a "bad (or sick) guy."

It's all speculation, of course. It's still possible Trump made up the whole thing, out of paranoia or whatever.

But this latest wrinkle suggests he's protecting a criminal leaker, and has known all along Obama never tapped Trump Tower (at least, not directly).

Trump's mistake? That he jumped so high and came down so hard. His level of outrage pointed inevitably to an unimpeachable source of information—of the sort no one would ever forget—raising the level of threat to the leaker.

Would have been better if Trump had been more tentative, suggesting merely the possibility he'd been tapped—just enough there to get people looking into it.

On the other hand, if that sneaky SOB Obama did tap foreign nationals for no other purpose than to find out what Trump was up to, either he learned nothing of use—or the Democrats got good intel and failed to make use of it.

Either way, more fun for us all.