At the beginning of March, President Donald Trump tweeted that his home at Trump Tower had allegedly been wiretapped by former President Barack Obama.

If anything is going to set the tone for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, it is his ability to tweet inflammatory accusations with no evidence whatsoever and still manage to create a stir within Congress and the media.

The allegations of Obama wiretapping Trump only served to waste FBI resources and the time of Congressional committees that were forced to investigate into the hot mess that the Trump administration has been so far.

The wiretap accusations beautifully sum up how Trump and Co. have been doing things since they began running things back in January.

But Trump has managed to beautifully alienate his supporters from the mainstream media. His untrustworthy claims reek of misinformation to those with common sense. However, his supporters take his word as fact while the mainstream has the wherewithal to get information from other sources besides his Twitter rants.

This has become an issue already. Trump supporters in Kentucky were asked whether or not James Comey would be capable of conducting an independent, fair investigation. His supporters were very skeptical of his ability to do that, even though it’s Comey’s job to investigate in a nonpartisan manner.

At first, it’s difficult to imagine how one man was able to convince his supporters that the bulk of the media is fake news. Yet it becomes easier and easier to comprehend once the deep political polarization that plagues America gets factored in.

It’s easier to tell people that the things that they don’t agree with are wrong instead of forcing them to use their brains. For the most part, Trump has been getting away with that by throwing something out for the media to attack that’s even more outrageous, instead of facing the issue at hand.

It’s a shame that news outlets haven’t been able to shake the wiretapping claims and have continued to report every little detail about them as the month progressed. It was obviously an unfounded, outrageous claim, yet they took the bait and poured writers and resources into it instead of continuing to report on the things that mattered.

Trump is a poor quality leader for this stunt because it proves that no one is safe from his accusatory dialogue.

If he can hurl baseless claims at the previous president, what stops him from acting in the same manner toward foreign diplomats and leaders? Disrespect on the international level is never a good idea.

It is imperative that Americans learn to gather their news from multiple sources and that our president does not tweet bombshells like that in the future.

Opinion editor Thomas Dwyer is a broadcast journalism sophomore and can be reachedatopinion@thedailycougar.com.

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“Trump Tower wiretap claims show a dangerous pattern” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar