Pres. Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson that reading a news story and watching a TV segment that mentioned wiretapping led to his tweet on March 4 that read: “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
In an interview with Carlson, conducted today in Michigan, Trump said, “I had been reading about things. I had been reading a New York Times article about wiretapping. I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier, where he was talking about certain, very complex sets of things happening.”
The night before Trump sent that tweet, Baier asked Speaker of the House Paul Ryan if he was concerned “that the Obama administration may have been surveilling members of the Trump campaign in a pretty detailed investigation during the election?”
Ryan said, “I don’t think that’s the case.”
In his interview, Carlson pressed the president saying, “You have the ability to gather all the information you want, you are the president.”
“I do. But I think, frankly, we have a lot right now, but if you watched Bret Baier and what he was saying, what he was talking about, and how he mentioned the word wiretap you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it.”