“I RECOMMEND READING THIS CLOSELY, LOOKING FOR THE WEASEL WORDS:” The NYT struggles to fight off Trump’s use of that NYT headline “Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.”

Liu writes that Trump was “misleading” to say that the Times said that “wiretap data” was “used in inquiry of Trump aides.” “Misleading” is NOT the same as false, so Liu really is admitting that it was true. The reason it’s misleading, according to Liu, is that the article doesn’t say that “Mr. Obama ordered surveillance on him.” Did Trump say Obama ordered surveillance on him? There’s no Trump quote to that effect, and it makes me suspicious that Trump is being paraphrased to confine him to what can be refuted, which — talk about misleading! — feels very misleading.

It’s been hard for the press to pivot directly from Leaked Wiretaps Show Trump’s a Putin Stooge all the way to Wiretaps? What wiretaps?

Plus:

That sounds like a concession that Flynn was wiretapped! He may not have been the original target or the official target, but he got swept in, and we shouldn’t even know about that. But there was a leak, and wasn’t the leak targeted on him — a gross violation of law designed to take him down? I can’t believe we’re nitpicking Trump’s use of the term “wiretapped” rather than outraged about a shocking abuse of power for political purposes.

Well, that’s how they try to distract people. And:

Many words are dead metaphors, and “wiretapped” may be one, whether it’s in quotes or not. Who cares if there were “wires” that were “tapped”? It’s like looking for eaves when someone is said to be eavesdropping. I think the stress on the word “wiretapped” is part of an effort to say that some other party was targeted — some foreign official was listened in on — and that caused the overhearing of some Trump-associated persons. There was a wiretap, but the wires tapped (metaphorically) were not a Trump associate’s. But to use that opportunity — that wiretap — to listen in is a terrible infringement on the non-target, and the law required the protection of these non-targets from an invasion of their privacy. Instead, the leakers did the opposite and took advantage of what they heard and deliberately exposed what they were legally required to mask. That’s what I gather from Liu’s article anyway. Why doesn’t the NYT care about this problem!

Because it would hurt the narrative. (Bumped).