Trump Won't Retract British Spying Claim, Jokes With Merkel About Wiretapping

On March 16, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, citing Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano, told reporters that Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency had surveilled Trump at President Obama's request; GCHQ took the unusual step of publicly calling the claim 'nonsense' and 'utterly ridiculous,' and the U.S. reportedly apologized to the British government over it. At a joint White House press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel the next day, a reporter pressed Trump on the British surveillance claim; rather than retract or apologize, Trump said, 'All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television,' deflecting responsibility to a Fox News commentator. Asked separately about his own unsubstantiated claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, Trump turned to Merkel -- whose cellphone had been confirmed as an NSA surveillance target years earlier -- and said, 'As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps,' a remark Merkel did not respond to. Trump also said he 'very seldom' regrets his tweets. The unretracted GCHQ claim and the on-camera joke were widely reported as a diplomatic embarrassment that implicated an allied intelligence service in an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory without correction.

“As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps.” Quote verified against source