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In tweets on Russian meddling, Trump defends himself, attacks Obama and seeks to redefine 'obstruction'

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President Trump unleashed a series of tweets Monday in which he appeared to place the blame for Russian meddling in U. S. politics onto …
His tweets have the power to shape international relations, send stock prices up — or down — and galvanize the American public.
We’re watching how Donald Trump is using this platform of unfettered communication now that he’s commander in chief. Here is everything Trump has tweeted since he was sworn in as 45th president of the United States. In many cases, we look at what he was reacting to and whether what he said was accurate. And, as much as possible, we’ll relate what else was going on at the time. Check back for more as Trump continues to tweet.
President Trump unleashed a series of tweets Monday in which he appeared to place the blame for Russian meddling in U. S. politics onto former President Obama.
Trump, who has a long history of deflecting criticism from himself to others, seemed to be trying to redefine what it means to collude or obstruct as he pushed back against an investigation into whether Trump’s own team colluded with Russian officials during the campaign and transition.
Trump appeared to be referencing a Washington Post report about the Obama administration’s handling of Russia’s alleged attempts to influence voters in which some officials questioned whether the former president had done enough to stop Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Obama ordered a review of Russia’s actions and imposed new sanctions after the Nov. 8 election.
As president, Trump has frequently disparaged the Russia probe as a “witch hunt” promoted by Democrats. Monday’s tweets appeared aimed at delegitimizing some of the allegations frequently hurled at him by his political opponents.
Wayne Fields, a Washington University professor who has studied political rhetoric, said Trump appeared to be co-opting terms like “collusion” and “obstruction” as part of a larger strategy to “invalidate” some of the arguments made against him.
“You take words and you do everything you can to make them meaningless, ” Fields said. “You take any kind of precision out of public discourse so it can’t be used against you.”
Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who has written about public corruption, said Trump appeared to be taking the term “obstruction, ” which means impeding an investigation, and applying it to a decision by his predecessor not to pursue an investigation as vigorously as possible.
“Inaction is not an obstruction, but of course it has some potency as a political attack, ” Henning said.
Asked about the comments, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters there were “some serious questions” about what the Obama administration “did or did not do in terms of acting” after evidence of Russian meddling surfaced during the campaign.
“Obviously, I don’t have all the understanding of what they knew or when they knew it, but there does seem to be a bit of hypocrisy in terms of what they didn’t clearly do if they truly believe all of this was happening, ” Spicer said. “If they did know all this, then they clearly do know that there wasn’t a collusion.”

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