Sean Spicer: Trump didn't mean a wiretap when he tweeted about one

On 4 March, United States President Donald Trump accused his predecessor of wire tapping his phone while he was on the campaign trail.

He supplied no information or evidence other than wild allegation, and compared the charges to the acts of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

On Monday, the White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended his allegations, which have in nearly two weeks remained unsupported by any evidence, by saying that Donald Trump didn't tweet what he tweeted.

Spicer said:

I think there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election.

The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities.

Donald Trump accused Barack Obama twice of tapping his phone without quote marks on 4 March, as the above tweets show.

Also, numerous tweets show President Donald Trump has an at-best limited understanding of the function of quotation marks:

So Sean Spicer asking the press to believe that Trump was conveying a non-specific act is a laughable leap of faith.

As Ted Lieu pointed out - if there was a wiretap on Trump Tower, it means that a federal judge had found probable cause.

White House counselor and spin doctor Kellyanne Conway told a Bergen County Record columnist on Sunday:

What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other.

You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.

She added this could also be done through:

Microwaves that turn into cameras. We know this is a fact of modern life.

Conway later told CNN of the claims:

I’m not Inspector Gadget. I don’t believe people are using their microwave to spy on the Trump Campaign.

However, I am not in the job of having evidence.

That’s what investigations are for.

You could say the entire Trump administration isn't in the business of having evidence.

More: Is this where Trump got his Obama wire tap conspiracy theory?