Trump says he was being ‘sarcastic’ in asking Russia to ‘find’ Clinton’s emails

Donald Trump makes a campaign stop in Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday. He faced a day of harsh criticism from across the political spectrum for appearing to urge Russia to hack his Democratic rival's email. John Moore/Getty Images
Donald Trump makes a campaign stop in Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday. He faced a day of harsh criticism from across the political spectrum for appearing to urge Russia to hack his Democratic rival’s email. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A day after shocking the political and foreign policy establishments on both sides of the aisle with a call for Russia to hack into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email, Republican nominee Donald Trump now says he was being “sarcastic.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, Trump said he would welcome Russian hackers releasing any emails they could “find” from the private email server Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said Wednesday at a news conference in Miami. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” He also tweeted: “If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”

Trump’s comments came days after Wikileaks released thousands of internal Democratic National Committee emails that are believed to have been stolen by hackers allied with Russia.

“Of course I’m being sarcastic,” Trump said in a Thursday morning interview with “Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade. “But you have 33,000 emails deleted, and the real problem is what was said on those emails from the Democratic National Committee. You take a look at what was said on those emails, it’s disgraceful.”

Trump’s initial comments were quickly condemned by the Clinton campaign, many in the foreign policy community and scores of Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose spokesman said Russia is “a global menace led by a devious thug” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should stay out of this election.”

On Wednesday night, former CIA Director Leon Panetta spoke about Trump’s comments on the emails during his speech before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

“Today, Donald Trump once again took Russia’s side,” Panetta said. “He asked the Russians to interfere in American politics.”

 

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

NPR News

KTOO is the NPR member station in Juneau. NPR offers its members radio and digital stories.

Sign up for The Signal

Top Alaska stories delivered to your inbox every week

Site notifications
Update notification options
Subscribe to notifications