CNN's Jake Tapper reacts to a poll that shows a "shockingly high" percentage of Americans believe then-President Obama ordered surveillance on then-candidate Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The ABC/Washington Post poll shows 32% of those polled think Obama intentionally spied on Trump while 58% disagree.



"This is the time for you, the public, to demand evidence from your leaders and from your media, even if you already agree with the politics of the person on your TV," Tapper said Wednesday night.





JAKE TAPPER, CNN: Finally from us tonight, we noticed some numbers that alarmed us today. They appeared in an ABC News/Washington Post poll showing a shockingly high percentage of Americans believe President Obama intentionally spied on Donald Trump and members of his campaign.



This all began, of course, on March 4th after a long frustrating week for the president. At the end of which, he suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere began a succession of tweets that started with, "Terrible, just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism."



Now, if McCarthyism is defined as making wild accusations without any evidence, the only thing that was McCarthyism were the president's tweets. Any evidence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan?



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



REP. PAUL RYAN, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: You know, any evidence that this has occurred, the intelligence committee has not seen evidence that this has occurred.



(END VIDEO CLIP)



TAPPER: How about you, FBI Director James Comey?



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside --



(END VIDEO CLIP)



TAPPER: So that would have seemingly been that, except that the president and his team kept pushing ways to try to make this evidence free claim somewhere sort of possibly in the neighborhood of almost not entirely false. Now they failed, but they muddied the waters quite a bit. And now here are the shocking numbers from today.



32 percent of the public thinks President Obama intentionally spied on Donald Trump and members of his campaign and 52 percent of Republicans believe this charge. A charge that there is literally no evidence to support. It is the definition of fake news.



Now, look, this is America and you can believe whatever you want to believe. 18 percent of the public says they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost. I mean whatever. But in a thriving democracy, truth matters and facts matter.



We learned in the campaign that Donald Trump can be cavalier about facts and truth. We learned in his first 100 days that that's not going to change. Indeed, that some in the government and some of his friends and conservative media will even work to tried and make his falsehoods seem true.



But you know what? There's also a lot of incendiary nonsense against President Trump on the left to these days that is just as fake and just as free of any evidence. Both in progressive media and all over twitter being retweeted by otherwise sensible folks.



This is a time for all journalists to be extra careful about our own reporting to make sure we adhere strictly to facts and cogent analysis. And this is the time for you, the public, to demand evidence from your leaders and from your media, even if you already agree with the politics of the person on your TV.