During an interview with CBS Miami, Donald Trump said he’d like to change the nature of the First Amendment in order to make it easier to file libel lawsuits against the media.
Trump spoke with Jim DeFede on Sunday, and he was asked about whether he feels that “too much protection” is given to the free press. Trump affirmed his belief on this issue, stating that America should lean towards the United Kingdom’s system for libel because it gives people who sue media agencies “a good chance of winning.”
“Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it. And I think we should go to a system where if they do something wrong… I’m a big believer tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me but if they make terrible, terrible mistakes and those mistakes are made on purpose to injure people. I’m not just talking about me I’m talking anybody else then yes, I think you should have the ability to sue them.”
Under English law, defamatory statements are assumed to be false, and the burden of proof lies with the defendant to show that their statement is true. While Trump talked about this system, Trump said that the American press is never compelled to apologize, and that “they can say anything they want about you or me and there doesn’t have to be any apology.”
Donald Trump does not respect the democratic process.
A defiant Donald Trump used the high-profile setting of the final presidential debate here Wednesday night to amplify one of the most explosive charges of his candidacy: that if he loses the election, he might consider the results illegitimate because the process is rigged.
Questioned directly as to whether he would accept the outcome should Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail on Nov. 8, Trump demurred. “I will keep you in suspense,” the Republican nominee said.
When given a chance to clarify his remarks by host Chris Wallace, Trump simply repeated his refusal to say for certain that he would accept the results of the election.
Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” saying he was “talking down our democracy.”
With his leading of the racist birther movement and his refusal during the third debate, this is the third consecutive presidential election that Donald Trump tried to de-legitimize.
In order to understand just how anti-democracy and anti-American Trump’s stance is, we need some historical context.
The United States of America is credited as the very first time in the recorded history of the world a peaceful, election-based transfer of political power of the premier from one political party to another. The entire world watched as America’s election of 1800 became a bitter and ugly fight between incumbent President John Adams and challenger and fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson. People in Europe, who lived under monarchies and theocracies for centuries, assumed this would be the point where America’s experiment with democracy would fail. But when President Adams lost and peacefully conceded total and complete power to Jefferson, it placed the rest of the world is disbelief, and led as an example for every election that followed.
(Side note, I’m a fan of Roman history and there were many instances where individuals were made dictator, usually to help stop an invading group, and then peacefully stepped down when their term as dictator was up. It was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who first began this tradition, who many statesmen modeled themselves after including George Washington who insisted his paintings and sculptures were to be inspired from those of Cincinnatus.)
2000 Election
Many of Trump’s surrogates have pointed to the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore as a recent example of one candidate not conceding to another.
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “Al Gore had already conceded the election to George W. Bush in 2000, Chris, we remember the night well. And then he called to retract his concession, and it went on for six weeks, it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”
But what Conway and the other supports are deceitfully neglecting to mention is in 2000, we had a perilously close popular vote in the state of Florida which triggered an automatic machine recount of ballots in the state. Only after that recount showed the race even closer than it was previously—just 327 votes separated the two candidates out of 6 million votes total across the state—did Gore opt to pursue a hand recount in four counties, a right granted to him by Florida law.
The day after the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to stop its recount of ballots on December 12, 2000, Al Gore conceded the race and called George W. Bush to congratulate him on his victory.
This is absolutely and unequivocally nothing like Trump refusing to accept the results of the election should he lose.
At an October 10 campaign rally, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed Clinton family friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal told Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that “one important point has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable.” Trump alleged Blumenthal said that “if the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate”:
However, Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald found the alleged Blumenthal comments “really, really familiar.” Eichenwald found the comments “so familiar” because, in fact, “they were something I wrote.”
In an October 10 article, Eichenwald revealed that Sputnik, a news organization “established by the [Russian] government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya,” discovered in a WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s hacked emails “a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal” calling the Benghazi attacks a “legitimate” talking point against Clinton.
In reality, Sputnik’s declared “‘October surprise’” quoted “two sentences from a 10,000 word piece” Eichenwald wrote for Newsweek “which apparently Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta.” Contrary to the lies from Sputnik and Trump, Eichenwald’s article is not about how the Benghazi attacks are Hillary Clinton’s fault, but rather “the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans” and “the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation.”
Even though “once they realized their error, Sputnik took the article down,” Trump continued to use Russian state media’s lie as a weapon against his political opponent. This fits Trump and his campaign’s pattern of questionable relations with Russia, including calls for the Kremlin to commit a cyberattack against Hillary Clinton.
Reality
So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?
On the internet a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on, and this incorrect story was clearly shared enough in the areas of the internet where conspiracy theories and pro-Russian views thrive. Trump must have seen this story on Sputnik or shared on a site that uses Russian propaganda as a source.
If the dark areas of the internet where conspiracy theories are incubated is where Trump and his campaign go looking for information then this should be a major concern.
Donald Trump gave an interview Thursday that aired on a television station funded by the Kremlin, arguing that the Russian government was “probably” not meddling in the American presidential race.
Speaking to Larry King on RT America, which is an arm of government-funded news outlet Russia Today, Trump said it would “not be appropriate” if Russian forces were looking to influence the race, which is suspected by some investigators and has been fanned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign as recently as Thursday morning.
He also suggested that the allegation was politically motivated.
“I think it’s probably unlikely. Maybe the Democrats are putting that out — who knows,” Trump told King. “If they are doing something, I hope that somebody’s going to be able to find out so they can end it. Because that would not be appropriate at all.”
Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, told CNN the interview was recorded as a podcast and was a favor to King, adding, “Mr. Trump was never told it would be shared anywhere else.” Miller later said Trump wouldn’t have agreed to do the interview had he known it would be aired on RT.
The interview was striking given that Trump spent Thursday on the defensive over some of his laudatory comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton attacked Trump for praising Putin on Wednesday evening at the “Commander in Chief Forum” as a stronger leader than President Barack Obama, and her campaign has for weeks pointed out the alleged ties between Trump’s associates and Russian interests.
Yet the Republican nominee’s operation on Thursday indicated no discomfort with the mounting criticism, with Trump running mate Mike Pence echoing the distinction made between Putin and Obama. And the appearance on Russian television suggested no hesitation from Trump to dive into the controversy.
Putin has called the hack of Democratic officials’ email accounts a “public service” but has denied Russian involvement. Asked by King if he agreed with Putin’s assessment, Trump declined to pass judgment.
“I don’t know who hacked. You tell me: Who hacked?” Trump said, claiming he had not heard Putin’s statement. “I have absolutely no opinion on that.”
Asked during the RT America interview what has surprised him most about the political process, Trump unloaded on the American press.
“Well, I think the dishonesty of the media. The media has been unbelievably dishonest,” Trump responded. “I mean they’ll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they’ll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it.”
“And all of a sudden it doesn’t look as good as it did when you actually said it. But there’s tremendous dishonesty with the media. Not all of it, obviously, but tremendous dishonesty,” he said.
Trump also weighed in on domestic politics, declining to criticize Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson for a gaffe he made earlier on Thursday and saying unequivocally that Johnson should not be in the general election debate later this month. Johnson would need to earn 15% support in polls to make the stage, an effort seemingly hampered when he failed to identify the war-torn city of Aleppo, Syria, in a live television interview.
“He’s not too much of a factor,” Trump said. “I’d rather it be Hillary and myself, because we’re the only two with a chance of winning.”
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, defended Trump’s appearance to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” on Friday, saying that Trump wasn’t criticizing the US to say the Iraq War was a failure.
“If you think that Donald Trump is the only person in this country that thinks we’ve had a feckless, anemic foreign policy in the last eight years, then that’s just not true,” Conway said.
She also clarified Trump’s comments on Putin the day before, in which Trump called Putin a stronger leader than Obama in his country.
“In the full clip he said, ‘That’s not the system I agree with, but he’s a strong leader there,'” Conway said. “I mean, nobody wants to play the full clip.”
King’s show, PoliticKing, is produced by Ora TV, which was founded by King and Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim in 2012. In June 2015, Ora announced it was dropping plans to work on a television project with Trump following his controversial remarks about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
As Mediate points out, Trump likely didn’t think too much beyond just doing an interview with his longtime friend Larry King. And the Trump campaign spokeswoman said that they thought Larry King interview was going to be on King’s podcast, not Russia Today.
What would be worse, though? A U.S. presidential candidate agreeing to do an interview on Russia Today, or doing one by accident?
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Republican nominee Donald Trump said that as President he would start racial profiling United States citizens, and should their views be “extreme” he would have them deported.
As an example, Trump used the father of Omar Mateen, the man who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando — in spite of his status as a U.S. citizen.
“I’d throw him out,” Trump said of Seddique Mateen, according to the Washington Post. The former reality TV star said that racial and religious profiling is something our country should start practicing in the interest of protecting itself.
“But look,” said Trump, “we have — whether it’s racial profiling or politically correct, we’d better get smart. We are letting tens of thousands of people into our country. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”
“And frankly, the Muslims have to help us, because they see what’s going on in their community,” he said. “And if they’re not going to help us, they’re to blame also.”
Regarding Seddique Mateen, Hannity asked, “What do we do when we find somebody that has extreme views? Do we throw them the hell out?”
“I’d throw him out,” Trump said as the audience cheered. “If you look at him, I’d throw him out. You know, I looked at him. And you look, he’s smiling.”
Donald Trump is putting forth a proposal that would be a clear violation the 1st, 4th, and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as existing laws.
Mateen is a U.S. citizen, a status that is considered irrevocable except in extremely rare cases in which naturalized citizens become “denaturalized.” Typically, to be denaturalized one must get caught forging documents, falsifying important information or concealing of relevant facts, refusal to testify before Congress, membership in groups attempting to overthrow the government and dishonorable discharge from the military.
Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention based on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior.
(Washington Post) – In early June, a little-known adviser to Donald Trump stunned a gathering of high-powered Washington foreign policy experts meeting with the visiting prime minister of India, going off topic with effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.
The adviser, Carter Page, hailed Putin as stronger and more reliable than President Obama, according to three people who were present at the closed-door meeting at Blair House — and then touted the positive effect a Trump presidency would have on U.S.-Russia relations.
A month later, Page dumbfounded foreign policy experts again by giving another speech harshly critical of U.S. policy — this time in Moscow.
The United States and other Western nations have “criticized these regions for continuing methods which were prevalent during the Cold War period,” Page said in a lecture at the New Economic School commencement. “Yet ironically, Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.”
Page has an ambiguous role in Trump’s campaign. But since being named to the Republican nominee’s team in March, his stature within the foreign policy world has grown considerably, drawing alarm from more-established foreign policy experts who view him as having little real understanding about U.S.-Russia relations. Many also say that Page’s views may be compromised by his investment in Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Other foreign policy experts from both parties say they are distressed with Page for his criticism of sanctions, praise for Putin and his advisers, and his tepid response to what most U.S. policymakers see as Russian aggression.
“It scares me,” said David Kramer, who was responsible for Russia and Ukraine at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. He called Page’s speech in Moscow and recent comments by Trump on the possibility of lifting sanctions against Moscow “deeply unsettling.”
Asked to comment on Page’s public statements and campaign role, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Page was an “informal foreign policy adviser” who “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.” Trump first named Page as one of a handful of his foreign policy advisers during a meeting at The Washington Post.
The open embrace of a controversial foreign leader is unusual for an adviser to a presidential candidate — and a break from a decades-old Republican tradition of tough stances toward Moscow.
Page, who worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch a decade ago and who has said he is invested in Gazprom, joins other Trump advisers who have done business in Russia while advocating closer relations. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example, has wooed investments from oligarchs linked to Putin and advised the now-toppled pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Trump has also expressed admiration for Putin, questioned U.S. obligations to defend NATO allies and most recently — after hacked emails were released on the eve of the Democratic National Convention — asked for Russian help to find the deleted emails of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. At the time he spoke, the FBI was investigating a break-in at the Democratic National Committee by alleged Russian hackers. Later, Trump said the request was made sarcastically.
While his comments have drawn derision from some quarters, friends of the 45-year-old Page say that he is knowledgeable about Russian affairs, and they profess astonishment that he has chosen to advise Trump.
Relationship with Gazprom
A graduate of the Naval Academy later posted as a Marine intelligence officer in Western Sahara, Page won a fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations, where he wrote about Turkey’s role as a hub for oil and natural gas being taken by pipeline from the Caspian Sea region to Europe. After earning a degree from New York University’s business school, Page moved in 2004 to Moscow, where he worked for Merrill Lynch until 2007.
Page, who declined to comment for this article, has said in other media interviews that he also struck up a relationship with Gazprom. His Web biography says he was an adviser “on key transactions for Gazprom,” the Russian electric utility and other energy companies. In a two-hour interview with Bloomberg News in late March, he said he advised Gazprom on its largest deals, including buying a stake in an oil and natural gas field near Russia’s Sakhalin Island and the merging of two classes of Gazprom stock, one of which was restricted to foreigners and the other to Russians.
Page has offered that experience as one of his main areas of expertise, but his boss at Merrill Lynch at the time says that Page’s claims are exaggerated.
Sergey Aleksashenko, former deputy chairman of the Russian central bank and former chairman of Merrill Lynch Russia, says that Page did not play a key role at that time. “He was a vice president, and the job of vice president is not to organize deals but to execute,” Aleksashenko said.
He also said that no one at Merrill Lynch advised Gazprom on its purchase of Sakhalin oil and gas assets from a group led by Royal Dutch Shell, because the deal was driven by the Russian government, which strong-armed Shell by holding back environmental permits, complaining about the extent of local content and slowing Shell’s work to a crawl.
“Gazprom did not need any advice,” Aleksashenko said. “It was not a commercially driven transaction.”
Merrill Lynch was one of three firms that issued a fairness opinion on the price Gazprom eventually paid the Shell group.
Aleksashenko said when he heard that Trump named Page as an adviser, “I was laughing because he was never ready to discuss foreign policy.”
After he left Moscow, Page worked as chief operating officer of Merrill Lynch’s energy and power department in New York. Later, he set up Global Energy Capital, which is around the corner from Trump Tower. But he told Bloomberg News that he failed to raise money for a private-equity fund to buy assets in Turkmenistan. Instead, he says on his website that he advised others on investing in Russia and emerging markets.
Page’s position as a Trump adviser has catapulted him into the most prestigious policy events, such as a closed-door session co-chaired by former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Republican consultant Vin Weber at Cambridge University in July. After his speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, Page spoke briefly with another speaker, Arkady Dvorkovich, who is a graduate of the school, deputy to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and now chairman of the Russian Railways board.
Page also went to the Republican National Convention, where he attended a session held by the International Republican Institute and a separate, sponsored foreign policy event.
Page has left a trail of blog posts on the Global Policy Journal that has traditional foreign policy experts scratching their heads. For example, on Feb. 10, 2015, he compared the 2015 National Security Strategy rationale for imposing sanctions on Russia to an 1850 publication offering slaveholders guidance on how to produce “the ideal slave.”
After the Obama administration added Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin to its sanctions list in 2014, limiting Sechin’s ability to travel to the United States or do business with U.S. firms, Page praised the former deputy prime minister, considered one of Putin’s closest allies over the past 25 years. “Sechin has done more to advance U.S.-Russian relations than any individual in or out of government from either side of the Atlantic over the past decade,” Page wrote.
Since being named as a member of the Trump team in March, Page’s background in Russia has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest.
During his interview with Bloomberg News, he said that he owns shares of Gazprom and that his stock portfolio had suffered since 2014, when the United States and Europe imposed economic sanctions on Russia after its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
In his Moscow speech in July, Page suggested that investment was the key to better relations. He said the United States should provide Russia with “emerging technologies and potential capital market access contingent upon the U.S.’s refocus toward resolution of domestic challenges.” Russia would, in turn, approve “collaborative partnerships in the energy industry and other diversified sectors.”
“So many people who I know and have worked with have been so adversely affected by the sanctions policy,” Page told Bloomberg News. “There’s a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation.” While acknowledging his own investments in Russia, Page told Bloomberg News his work on the campaign was unlikely to help his portfolio.
All holdings in Russia by members of the Trump team should be fully disclosed, said Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama who is now teaching at Stanford University.
‘Refreshing to Russian ears’
Trump is not the first national political figure to suggest improved relations with Russia; Obama and Clinton advocated a “reset” a few years ago, which they have since abandoned. Trump is also not alone in seeking more military spending from U.S. allies in Europe. But he is the first to cast doubt on NATO’s mutual defense commitment or to request help from Russia in undermining his opponent.
“I think what we are offering is a very clear, mature, adult, realistic view of the world,” said Sam Clovis, an Iowa talk-show host and former Senate candidate who backs Trump and makes the case for rethinking U.S. commitments around the globe.
The Republican platform committee at the party’s convention last month was one place Trump campaign aides have promoted that view, according to national security experts who were there. They said Trump campaign staffers weakened language that would have called for military support of Ukraine.
“It was troubling to me that they would want to water down language that supports a country that has been invaded by an aggressive neighbor,” said Rachel Hoff, a member of the platform committee.“I think the U.S. should properly come to Ukraine’s aid in that struggle. In the past, that would not be considered a controversial Republican position.”
Manafort denied on “Meet the Press” this week that the campaign had sought to alter platform language related to Russia. However, those present said they negotiated directly with people who worked for the campaign.
Democrats, however, have suggested something more sinister lies behind Trump’s unusual views on Russia. McFaul, who reviewed Page’s early July speech in Moscow, said he disagreed with the content and added that he knew of no precedent for a presidential campaign adviser publicly criticizing U.S. policy in a foreign capital. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), has said that the Russian ties of Trump’s advisers show that the “Kremlin has tentacles into the Trump campaign.”
Meanwhile, in Moscow, all this is being watched closely.
“I think Donald Trump is a very interesting internal American phenomenon,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs and chairman of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. He said that in July, Page had not established contacts with the Kremlin and had only met with some university professors for informal coffees.
“I don’t think he has any direct support here,” Lukyanov said of Trump. “What he’s saying sounds very much refreshing to Russian ears. If he by chance were elected president, I think many people in Russia would love it.”
After Donald Trump compared it to a “war zone” on Tuesday, the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, joined the parents of a dead soldier, our country’s fire marshals, Paul Ryan and a human baby as the most recent addition to Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of mortal enemies.
At a rally in Virginia, Trump said the city of 49,673, which he had flown into the night before, “looked like a war zone where you (once had) these massive plants,” according to the Associated Press.
Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, said the words came shortly before noon Tuesday.
Trump said Harrisburg PA "looked like a war zone" from his plane
Tuesday night, Harrisburg fired back, saying in a statement that Trump made “an unfortunate mistake” disparaging the city “after a mere glance from the window of his airplane.”
Mr. Trump has made an unfortunate mistake in disparaging Pennsylvania’s capital city after a mere glance from the window of his airplane. Harrisburg is renowned as the heart of our commonwealth and a capital of unique beauty and charm.
Mr. Trump should know that Harrisburg and its residents are an integral part of the United States, which he is vying to lead. Its rich history and natural beauty have won both the respect and acclaim of some of America’s greatest leaders and patriots.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday invited Russian hackers to find and publish Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing,” Trump said at a press conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That’ll be nice.”
The remarks came after Clinton’s camp said this week that Russian hackers were likely responsible for breaching the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee earlier this year and leaking emails of top officials to WikiLeaks for publication.
The hack, which showed top staffers considering leaking negative information about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, led to chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announcing her resignation.
“Russia has no respect for our country,” Trump said at the press conference. “And that’s why, if it is Russia, nobody even knows it’s Russia, it was probably China. … It shows how weak we are. It shows how disrespected we are.”
Trump also slammed the DNC for what was seen as conspiring against Sanders to ensure that Clinton won the Democratic nomination.
“I’m not gonna tell Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do?” Trump said. “It’s not even about Russia or China or whoever it is that’s doing the hacking. It’s about the things they said in those emails. They were terrible things.”
He also accused Clinton of being in on the conspiracy.
“Believe me, as sure as you’re sitting there, Hillary Clinton knew about it,” Trump said. “She knew everything. Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not breathe without speaking and getting approval from Hillary Clinton.”
Trump doubled down on his Russian hacker comments in a tweet after the press conference, but revised his language to say that if Russia already has emails, they should hand them over:
If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!
But his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, released a statement after the press conference that discouraged Russian involvement in a US election.
“The FBI will get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking,” Pence said in the statement. “If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences.”
A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement after the press conference pushing back on Trump’s comments.
“Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug,” Brendan Buck said, according to the statement. “Putin should stay out of this election.”
Clinton’s campaign also responded.
“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
This is a curious comment at a time when Trump’s Russian connections are being scrutinized. His campaign manager Paul Manafort, had worked as a consultant for the now-ousted pro-Russian government in Ukraine. And the Trump campaign worked like mad to include a more pro-Russian stance towards arming Ukraine to be added in the GOP platform.
Here’s what Trump is up to with the “Russia, please release Hillary’s 30,000 emails.” He’s intentionally conflating the State Department server with the DNC email hack so that in the minds of Americans, Hillary already had her emails hacked by Russia. But they’re two different email scandals.
Trump is trying to make them into one thing so he can say Hillary endangered national security when Russia hacked her email (which there’s no evidence they did.)
But… But… But… He was just joking!
I mean, this might have been an attempt at humor. At best one could argue Trump was half-joking, since a Russian hack would greatly benefit him and his chances of becoming president.
And if the argument really is that he is joking then to that we would say to even publicly joke that a foreign government spy on his political rival is in poor taste because it is rooting against an American, which is all beneath the office he is seeking.
But in the end… what is the punchline?
Media
VIDEO: Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing…" https://t.co/NEGclzLXtP
