Update, July 27, 12:55 p.m. ET: The Clinton campaign quickly blasted Trump’s comments in a statement from Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser. “This has the be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” Sullivan said. “This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
Donald Trump encouraged Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails during a bizarre press conference on Wednesday in Miami.
“Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, referring to the emails that were not handed over to investigators from Clinton’s private email server. “I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The call for foreign hackers to take down his opponent was only one of the many strange moments in the press conference. Other highlights included:
- Trump claiming, “I don’t know anything about him,” when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin and the growing amount of evidence that the Democratic National Convention hack was carried about by Russia. Trump has in fact praised Putin for years and said in November of Putin that “I got to know him very well.”
- A repeat of the claim that American Muslims don’t report terror plots to authorities. FBI Director James Comey said last month after the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, that “some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.”
- Trump appeared to confuse Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, with former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean.
- He said he wouldn’t go to France, which has been the target of several recent terror attacks. “France isn’t France anymore,” he said, likely referring to the number of immigrants who now live in France. The French Embassy declined to comment.
