Shortly after the news conference, Trump tweaked his position further on Twitter, suggesting that any hacked emails should be shared with law enforcement rather than the public or Trump: “If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the Federal Bureau of Investigation!”
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“Of course I’m being sarcastic”, Trump said Thursday on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends”, a day after his remarks at a news conference ignited fierce debate over hacking and his urging of a global adversary to meddle in American politics.
“If Russia or China or any of those country gets those emails, I’ve got to be honest with you, I’d love to see them”.
USA officials and the Clinton campaign believe Russian Federation is responsible for the cyber breach that resulted in the release by Wikileaks of over 19,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, just before the beginning of the Democratic convention.
Trump has rejected any notions he has ties to Russian Federation amid allegations its government hacked internal emails at the Democratic National Committee to help elect him as president.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin”, Obama said during the sit-down with NBC News that aired Tuesday. “This is a national security issue now and the idea that you’d have any American calling for a foreign power to commit espionage in the U.S. for the objective of somehow changing an election, I think, that we’re now in a national security space”, he said.
“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”, Clinton’s chief foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
Trump also said that the political uproar over whether Russian Federation was meddling in the election was a “total deflection” from the embarrassing content of the e-mails.
When challenged by the press to condemn foreign powers that may be trying to intervene in the USA election, Trump replied: “No, it gives me no pause”.
“Today, Donald Trump once again took Russia’s side”, Panetta said.
His remarks provoked outrage from the Clinton campaign and left some Republicans wincing as his running mate hurriedly clarified that the party was not soft on Moscow and Trump tried to roll back his remarks. The party chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned on Sunday over the affair.
Also on Wednesday, Trump contradicted his earlier claim that he knows Putin “very well”, telling reporters, “I never met Putin”. That’s true, but it only refocused attention on Trump being unfit to serve as president and his bromance with Stalin 2.0 – Vladimir Putin. Russian Federation denies being involved.
Brazile said the release right before the Democratic convention seems suspect, as does the fact that the hackers could have gotten into the system approximately a year ago which “coincides with Donald Trump’s announcement for president”.
“His views of the world, as he says, ‘don’t jive, ‘” Trump said.
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“Part of the problem with this country is they go and they say, we’re going to do this, we’re going to attack here, we’re going to send this many men-no, no. You’ve got to keep it a little bit secret, got to keep it a little bit secret”. You look at that.
