The row spotlights deep United States distrust of Russia, fueling yet another day of headlines about whether Russian agents may have hacked into Democratic Party emails which, once leaked, hugely embarrassed the Clinton campaign.
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The Republican presidential nominee said the 30,000 missing emails from Clinton’s private email server would reveal “some beauties” and made an extraordinary plea for a foreign power to locate them.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin”, Obama said during the sit-down with NBC News that aired on Tuesday. He was referring to emails on Clinton’s private server that she said she deleted – because they were private – before turning other messages over to the State Department. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”, Mr Trump said.
The Clinton campaign called Trump’s statement the “first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against a political opponent”. “Putin should stay out of this election”, said Ryan through a spokesperson.
The sadder truth is that with the Democratic National Convention taking place this week, Trump has not been as much a feature of the news, with much of the coverage focused on speeches given by the wife of President Obama, Michele, and husband of Hillary Clinton and former president himself, Bill Clinton.
Following the breaches nearly 20,000 emails, where officials discussed undermining Bernie Sanders, were published by Wikileaks.
Trump said he knows nothing about the hack and suggested that Russian Federation may not be responsible (“Nobody knows who did it”). “I feel, frankly, good about him”.
Trump has alarmed European allies and many US national security experts with talk of forcing North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations to pay more for the USA security umbrella.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, and vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind., right shake hands during a campaign rally at Lackawanna College, Wednesday, July 27, 2016, in Scranton, Penn. Fortunately, little is likely to come of it. FBI Director James Comey said in sworn testimony that there is no evidence Ms. Clinton’s server was ever hacked by anyone.
But that’s not to say Trump doesn’t support the idea of a woman commander-in-chief, someday.
“It’s just a total deflection, this whole thing with Russia”, Trump said.
Later, just hours before Obama was to address the Democratic convention, Trump bashed him as “the most ignorant president in our history”, and added that “I believe that Hillary Clinton will be even worse”. “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”.
At a news conference in Doral, Florida, after Trump’s initial remarks, he was asked whether he had any qualms about asking a foreign government to hack into computers in the United States.
“There’s no change”, Trump said.
Asked if he would recognize Crimea as Russian territory, Trump said he would be “looking into that”. He has said that he has “zero investments” in Russian Federation and insisted that his company had not received any significant investments from the country. “I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it”.
“Russia has never interfered and does not interfere in internal affairs, especially in the electoral processes of other countries”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
“We see that the Russian card is in the red corner on the writing table of all Washington politicians during the election campaign, and that very often they make it a trump card in their game”.
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In Syria, despite deep mutual frustration, the USA and Russian Federation are trying to work together to end a five-year civil war that has killed as many as 500,000 and led to global terrorism fears.
