“Well, I think you heard what Mike Pence said, that Vladimir Putin has had a stronger influence on his country than Barack Obama has had here”.
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At the televised forum on Wednesday night, Trump said he was “shocked” by information he got during the briefing. “Who knows? But I think that it’s pretty unlikely”, he said.
Mr Trump urged the Russians in July to hack into Mrs Clinton’s emails to find messages that were deleted from her account amid an investigation into whether she abused state secrets.
Trump made his comments about Putin and USA top military brass, the latter of whom he said had been “reduced to rubble” as a result of the Obama administration’s policies, at a forum on national security and defense sponsored and broadcast by NBC on Wednesday evening.
“It’s not a serious presidential campaign, and it is beyond one’s imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin”.
“Because of our event, national security has dominated the news cycle for days”. Trump’s comment was reminiscent of a statement he made earlier in the year, when he suggested he could shoot somebody and not lose any supporters.
Trump’s interview surfaced as he and Clinton continue to clash over foreign policy in the run-up to the November 8 election.
Republican Donald Trump appears to have carved out a wider path to the White House as a number of states including Florida and OH are no longer considered likely wins for Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project released on Saturday. It fired off a fund-raising email after the forum, pointing out that Lauer “failed to fact-check” when Trump falsely said he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq before it happened. The Republican candidate was widely criticized recently when he called her a “co-founder”, along with Obama, of Islamic State.
Clinton was scheduled on Friday to meet with former senior national security officials in NY. “If you were looking for competency, Donald Trump fell short”, he said in a Facebook post. “That’s not only risky but it should be disqualifying”, Clinton said.
Trump and Clinton supporters went on the offensive on social media Wednesday night and Thursday morning, defending their candidates’ performances during the forum. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, came under fire last month after he was named in a Ukrainian corruption investigation which tied him to a pro-Kremlin political party. Afterwards, some of his supporters shrugged off his comments about Putin. “Every major paper and news broadcast around the world has led with headlines about Putin, Iraq, ISIS, and intelligence briefings”.
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“She tried to make up for her disgusting performance last night, it was a frightful performance, so she went on the tarmac and told more lies”, Trump said, blasting a news conference Clinton held on the tarmac of a NY airport.
