Trump administration pushes ‘whataboutism’ to its limits

By Clarence Page

Monday, March 13, 2017 | 2 a.m.

“Whataboutism” is running rampant these days in the White House.

What’s that, you may ask? It’s a Cold War-era term for a form of logical jiujitsu that helps you to win arguments by gently changing the subject.

When Soviet leaders were questioned about human rights violations, for example, they might come back with, “Well, what about the Negroes you are lynching in the South?”

That’s not an argument, of course. It is a deflection to an entirely different issue. It is a naked attempt to excuse your own wretched behavior by painting your opponent as a hypocrite. But in the fast-paced world of media manipulation, the Soviet leader could get away with it merely by appearing to be strong and firm in defense of his country.

So it is with President Donald Trump and the buffer of spokespersons he sends forth to explain what he “really meant” in his tweets and other hastily delivered statements that backfire against him later.

We could hear it earlier this month in White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ defense of her boss’ assertion by Twitter tweet that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump’s phones.

Instead of evidence — which Sanders apparently did not have — to back up the claim, she insisted that all Trump wanted was “a closer look” at the allegation.

“The New York Times, the BBC have also talked about and reported on the potential of this having had happened,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week.” “All we’re saying is let’s take a closer look. …”

In other words, what about the allegation? Forget about the alligator, uh, allegation maker.

Visibly frustrated, Martha Raddatz, the program’s co-anchor, responded, “If, if, if, if! Why is the president saying it did happen?”

“I think he is going off information he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential,” Sanders insisted. “The American people have a right to know if this took place.”

Yes, what about the American people’s right to know? This is “whataboutism” stretched to its limits. The American people have a right to know not only whether Trump’s phones were tapped, if they were, but also why Trump thinks they were tapped.

Yet he provided no evidence to back up the charge.

When Raddatz pressed the point, Sanders said, “His tweet speaks for itself.”

Ah, that’s more of a burden than a tweet can bear.

“He’s talking about, could this have happened?” she said.

No, he wasn’t. He was insisting that it did happen. “Terrible!” said Trump’s early morning March 4 tweet. “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Trump made the charge by tweet and then left his spokespeople to fend for themselves. That left a major challenge, even for a master of deflection like top Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Monday morning.

“We have this double standard for anonymous sources,” said Conway. “The media loves to use anonymous sources for anything and everything that could possibly be derogatory, negative for this president and his administration. And yet they refuse to give any credibility to such sources when it may be something positive or exculpatory.”

Ah, yes, that’s the old whataboutist technique of saying, “Why do you only report the bad news? What about all the good things that our president has done?”

Indeed, but let us not be deflected from the main point, which is the apparent unreliability of Trump’s sources.

How long can this go on? It took the president only four days to wipe away the good feelings left by his widely praised joint speech to Congress. He wiped away his newly enhanced presidential image by reverting back to childish tweets.

But this time, the message is downright dangerous. Presidents don’t accuse their predecessors of felonious wrongdoing without good cause. Or, at least, they haven’t in this country — until now.

Trump’s spokespersons want us to ignore what the president says and concentrate on what they say he means. That may work in the short term.

But the coincidence that dustup happened over a weekend in which North Korea resumed missile tests raises a bracing question: What happens in a national crisis?

Will Americans believe what this president says? Or will we scratch our heads trying to figure out what he means?

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.