July 27, 2016

Donald Trump to Russia: Please Hack Hillary!

The Clinton campaign is calling it a “national security issue.”


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.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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