CNN editor: Trump was ‘like a 3rd grader’ trying to ‘squirm out of a lie’ in Fox ‘wiretap’ interview

CNN's director of political coverage David Chalian said that Pres. Donald Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News on Wednesday looked like "a third-grader" trying to "squirm out of a lie" regarding his accusations that former Pres. Barack Obama "wiretapped" Trump Towers in the weeks before the 2016 election.

TheHill.com said that Chalian was speaking with Wolf Blitzer on Thursday when he made the observation.

"Yesterday on Fox he was still trying to worm his way out of the lie about wiretapping on that word,” said Chailan. “Saying you’re going to see in next couple weeks — something’s gonna come out — saying surveillance more broadly."

"It's just not okay for the president of the United States to make this kind of unsubstantiated claim," Chalian said. "There's really no end to the list of very big things that he should be focusing on pushing through" instead of obsessing over what we now know was a misleading story at Breitbart.com that got inserted into Trump's daily news printouts.

"The president looked like a third-grader in that interview yesterday trying to squirm out of a lie," Chalian said.

Trump made the accusations against Pres. Obama two weeks ago just after it came to light that Attorney Gen. Jeff Session had lied under oath about his meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Congressional intelligence committees to provide any evidence supporting his claim that Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower. Trump blew by the deadline, then sought out Carlson's show as a friendly venue to field questions about the issue.

Two Senate Intelligence Committee members -- Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- gave FBI Director James Comey until Wednesday to address publicly whether or not his agency is currently pursuing lines of investigation against the Trump organization with regards to its contacts with the Russian government.

Instead, Comey held closed-door meetings with Senate Judiciary Committee director and co-chair Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Both senators emerged from their briefings looking grim and shaken. Feinstein made a brief statement to reporters but refused to divulge the contents of the briefings.

The Senate committee released a statement on Thursday written by Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA) that said, "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."

Watch the video, embedded below: