Was The Trump Campaign Set Up?

Do you remember when Trump was ridiculed by the media and the Democrats for suggesting that his campaign phones were tapped?

Everyone in the media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the alphabetized broadcast media, including many on Fox, feigned disgust that Trump would make such a ridiculous accusation.

The talking heads spoke of it as proof that Trump was not ready for prime time, chuckling over it, offering it as proof that Trump didn't understand the nature of the job.

After all, Obama was far above that sort of thing.

Then came the revelations about the serial unmasking, which proved that Trump had been correct - his campaign telephones had indeed been tapped. Entire conversations were recorded, and leaked to the media.

Then came the connections between the Hillary campaign and Fusion GPS. Then Steele, McCable, Strzok, and Comey.

Now it is clear that the previous Administration used every intelligence gathering means at its disposal, with the goal of bringing Trump down.

Worse, it seems that their goal was not merely to bring him down but to set him up.

Think about that for a moment. This should concern every American, as it threatens the core of what makes our government work. This is the essence of due process. Whether you like someone or not, even if you disagree vehemently with his or her positions on issues that matter to you, everyone should be afforded the protections of due process.

If this plot is permitted to stand, the government now implicitly has the ability and will be allowed to plant evidence on your hard drive, in your home or work, or wherever they please.

If they want to get you, they can use unlimited government funds to investigate every aspect of your life, and that of everyone you call a friend, everyone you are related to, and everyone you do business with, and they can continue this investigation until they get something on them, whether or not it is in any way related to whatever they were supposedly looking for to begin with.

You have all heard that if the police follow you while you are driving, they will eventually catch you violating a traffic regulation. Our lives are like that, too.

This is even more diabolical if they can simply assert that you have crossed a center line, whether or not you actually did.

As it turns out, Trump's detractors may have been right to laugh at him - not because he was wrong in his accusations, but because he grossly underestimated the sophistication of the plot. In comparison to the whole of it, wiretapping was nothing.

Not only did they surveil his campaign, but they had federal agents working on it even after he was elected, and after he took office.

Now the evidence comes out that Page and Papadopoulos were baited by people connected to Steele, who was connected to Hillary, whose connections within the Obama Administration placed federal intelligence agencies in the hands of the Clinton campaign.

If so, this is the stuff of 3rd-world governments. Is this the America we want?

Whatever your disdain for Donald Trump, a government that can set up a political opponent has a license to forego due process and every other constitutionally afforded protection that is supposed to be in place to protect citizens from government overreach.

Now, even though large portions of the plot have been unraveled, there are no apologies or retractions from the media. Rather, when they report it at all, they bury it, or they dilute it with additional misinformation and distraction.

Don't look at the crime that's being committed in front of you - look at the squirrel.

In his book, Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy highlighted those who had the courage to buck party loyalties for the sake of principle. No such figure exists within the Democrat Party today.

From a recent Wall Street Journal article: "The conservative press has produced some intriguing stories about a handful of odd invitations and meetings that were arranged for Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos starting in the spring--all emanating from the United Kingdom. On one hand, that country is home to the well-connected Mr. Steele, which could mean the political actors with whom he was working were involved. On the other hand, the Justice Department has admitted it was spying on both men, which could mean government was involved. Or maybe... both."

This brings us to timing. It has long been know that Mr. Steele went to the FBI in early June to talk about the dossier, and that's the first known intersection of the strands. But given the oddity and timing of those UK interactions with Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos, and given the history of those who were arranging these meetings, you have to consider that the strands had converged much earlier than has thus far been admitted.

An Intelligence Committee subpoena is designed to sort this out. Who was pulling there strings? Was the goal information or entrapment?