Eli Lake, Columnist

Obama Trolls Trump With Clemency for Manning

It's getting tough for either party not to seem hypocritical on the radical transparency group.

January 18, 2017 at 10:20 AM UTC

Corrected

January 18, 2017 at 4:46 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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President Barack Obama's decision to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning is a great parting gift to Donald Trump. It's a Tu Quoque, an argument that exposes the hypocrisy in one's target, from the Latin: "you, also."

It's the kind of thing Trump is very good at. He tweets that he thinks people who burn the American flag should be put in jail. His critics pounce, only to learn later he is echoing the sentiment from a 2005 bill that Hillary Clinton co-sponsored when she was in the Senate.