Be Careful What You Wish For

The White House on Friday tried attack as a form of defence, deflecting questions about Donald Trump’s possible links to Russia by leveling serious allegations at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and chastising reporters for not investigating them.

At his daily briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer was even more combative than usual as he clashed with journalists from the New York Times and other outlets and accused the Obama administration of “potentially” leaking classified information for political ends.

[...]

“All of this should be very concerning to people that people in an administration, people serving in government, who are provided classified information, who are given clearance in the trust of the United States government, misused, mishandled and potentially did some very bad things with classified information.

“That astonishes me that that is not the subject of this, that all of this is happening in our country."

  The Guardian

This pressure to pursue the leaks could seriously backfire. (See here.)

On Friday, Spicer proved unable or unwilling to answer basic questions about key times, days and dates and whether or not records of visitors to the White House grounds were kept.

[...]

On Friday, Spicer insisted there has been “no evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, then turned to an attack on Trump’s defeated rival, Clinton. The former secretary of state, he said, was the architect of a failed “reset policy” with Russia, which she told that country’s state TV was designed to “strengthen Russia”.

He went on: “She used her office to make concession after concession, selling off one fifth of our country’s uranium. Paid speeches, paid deals, getting personal calls from Vladimir Putin. I think if they really want to talk about a Russian connection in the substance, that’s where we should be looking. That, not there.”

And that could be the same mistake the Clinton campaign made - talking about the opponent rather than clearing up your own shit.

The claim that Clinton “sold off” US uranium echoed claims by Trump regarding a 2010 sale in which Clinton was one of nine administration figures to sign off, claims which have been debunked by fact-checking websites as, at best, considerable distortions of the truth.

Apparently, this was a very testy press conference, and I'm guessing things are not going to get better between the Trump White House and reporters.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.