Trump Takes Pot Shots At McCain, Falsely Claims He Shared Dossier Before Election

GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump speaks at a Rally In Green Bay, Wisconsin on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)
GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Kelly Ay... GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) during the rally in an effort to heal rifts within the Republican Party. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Months after Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) death, President Donald Trump on Saturday and Sunday took pot shots at McCain on Twitter over his role in handing off the so-called “Steele Dossier” to the FBI.

In the tweets, Trump partly reiterated what McCain himself acknowledged in life — that the senator handed off the dossier to the FBI — but also falsely accused McCain of attempting to get the dossier’s contents into media reports before the 2016 election.

The claim is a false distortion of what former McCain aide David Kramer testified to in the defamation suit a Russian tech executive filed against BuzzFeed News, the first outlet to publish the dossier. Though a judge found late last year that BuzzFeed had the right to publish the dossier, Kramer’s testimony was only recently unsealed unsealed.

Trump’s tweets are incorrect in multiple ways: Not only did McCain learn about and obtain the dossier several days after Trump’s election, Kramer said during a deposition that he — not McCain — was in touch with media outlets concerning the dossier in December, also after Trump’s election.

Also, The Washington Post pointed out, McCain graduated fifth-to-last in his 1958 Naval Academy class, not last. Trump has never released his academic record.

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Notable Replies

  1. It’s the pivot!! Dear Leader exercised unpresidented restraint in not criticizing McCain for sitting out the Vietnam war in the luxurious Hanoi Hilton.

  2. The man is dead, Trump has no decency.

  3. Avatar for pshah pshah says:

    He’s prattling on about the Steele dossier after tweeting earlier about calling back Carlson and Pirro, almost as if he needs reinforcements for a pitched battle this week. Could Mueller indictments close to the Trump crime family finally be near? I sure hope so.

  4. It’s not too late for you to become a war hero, Donnie, so you can stop feeling jealous of a dead senator. Think of the ratings if you parachuted into Taliban-held territory with the CAPS LOCK enabled on your phone.

  5. Avatar for caltg caltg says:

    Trump’s increasingly frequent rants continue to prove that he is completely incapable of doing the job to which he was elected. Moreover, on a daily basis he reveals that he only tries to serve his “base,” that roughly 33% or less of Americans who voted for him and are his stalwart supporters. He is most certainly not serving the rest of us.

    And now, he seems to be on the verge of a melt-down. Hopefully he won’t take the rest of us down with him.

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