#Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday, claiming that he was the victim of "the single greatest #witch hunt of a politician in American history!" This combative move is indicative of the president's style of blasting out angry and incensed tweets first thing in the morning.
His claim appeared on his Twitter account only 24 hours after the Justice Department selected a #special counsel to look closely into ties between Trump's presidential campaign and official #Russians acting on behalf of the Kremlin. #Robert Mueller, previously an FBI investigator, was chosen to lead the ongoing investigation between the Trump election campaign and Russian officials in 2016.
This is the same investigation that FBI director #James Comey had been leading until he was fired by President Trump in a shock announcement last week.
Mueller's announcement, according to the New York Times, shocked the White House. The president was apparently only informed of the measure after the Deputy Attorney General #Rod Rosenstein had put his signature to the order.
Twitter rampage
As Trump took to Twitter early on Thursday morning, he mentioned " all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration" and said that there had never in those instances been a special counsel chosen to lead an investigation. Trump offered no evidence of the illegal acts that Obama or Clinton had in his eyes perpetrated, and gave no background or further explanation.
He also misspelt the word 'counsel' in his tweet.
It's true that a special counsel is a rare appointment, as Trump asserted, but his drawing on the legacies of Clinton and Obama certainly can't help his argument. During Clinton's reign as Secretary of State, there had been quite a few congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks that happened in Libya; these investigations focused on Clinton's role in the issue, and also took into consideration Obama's role.
On Thursday the president issued a statement through the White House that read: “As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know… there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.”
Throughout the following twenty-four hours the Oval office, according to the New York Times, held a lively debate about the matter with several senior officials claiming that the president's aides were calling for pacifying tones in order to mollify the rabid anger in the press and across the senate, Congress and indeed the country.
They debated how the president should respond to Robert Mueller's appointment.
A witch-hunt
Trump has used the phrase 'witch hunt' before to describe the rabid interest in his campaign's possible ties to Russia. He maintained in January that the Clinton campaign were angry at his win and were focusing on Russia to discredit him and his administration.
Trump has been sounding deeply dissatisfied and filled with grievances the past week with all the media's focus on his potential Russian ties and also with Comey's firing. He even delivered a commencement address to the #United States Coast Guard Academy twenty-four hours before his angry tweets, where he riffed abruptly on the unfair way that he had been treated.
He told the graduates that they would find that things aren’t fair in the world, making a swift departure from the optimistic tone he was supposed to endorse. “You will find that things are not always fair,” he told the graduates, referring to the way he's been treated by the media, and claiming that no politician in history "has been treated worse or more unfairly.”
