Today in flummoxing

Are you seeing a reservation on the unheated cattle train to Siberia in someone's future?

President Donald Trump's allegation on Twitter that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretaps of his phones during the election caught senior federal law enforcement officials completely off-guard, sources close to the matter have told Fox News.

"Sources," you say?

Those sources said that the officials in question had no idea what Trump was talking about when the president made the allegation on social media Saturday morning. The sources also told Fox that Trump did not consult with senior officials who would have been advised of any such wiretapping operations before posting the messages.

Trump claimed in a series of tweets without evidence Saturday that his predecessor had tried to undermine him by tapping the telephones at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump based his campaign and transition operations, and maintains a home.

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" he tweeted.

Trump's charge also left many in the White House and Justice Department confused and scrambling over the weekend to find any kind of factual backup for the president's accusations.

My, my, my.

... White House press secretary Sean Spicer said without elaborating Sunday that Trump's instruction to Congress was based on "very troubling" reports "concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election." Spicer did not respond to inquiries about the reports he cited in announcing the request.

Should you be wondering, of course, all is still bright in parts of the droolersphere -- for example, the PowerLine blog:

This is the most explosive political allegation in many years, far more explosive than Watergate. Is it true? I assume it has some basis in fact, e.g., Trump’s security people may have told him that they detected a tap on one or more of his phone lines. I have no idea how that works, or why it would only be detected now, or how the presence of a wire tap could be connected to the Obama administration. But it seems unlikely that Trump would make such a dynamite allegation without some kind of support.

Slept through the debates, did we?