Recently Trump made remarks about the emails deleted from Hillary’s personal email account and thus could not be accessed by the FBI. His actual remarks were: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump first said he was joking. But the joke probably indirectly makes reference to the now-common position that the Russians were involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and releasing them to damage Hillary Clinton’s nomination campaign. Russian involvement is widely reported as being confirmed by experts even though other experts point out as in USA Today : Computer security researchers say it’s difficult to definitively say the cyber theft of files from the Democratic National Committee subsequently posted online by Wikileaks was the work of Russian hackers, as some media outlets have reported.
Such details will be more and more left out as the drive to demonize Trump along with Russia becomes more urgent apparently.
Note that the emails Trump refers to were deleted. If, as the new narrative goes, Russians are busy hacking everything to do with US politics, perhaps they hacked into Hillary’s personal email account and have the emails. There is nothing to do with encouraging the Russians to hack Hillary’s email, just that if they did then they should reveal them to the press. Later Trump says they should reveal them to the FBI. The entire short episode simply takes a jibe at Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails that the FBI cannot examine and the view that the Russians have been busy hacking US politicians accounts. It appears to be nothing but a contrived joke as Trump first declared.
There is no mention of encouraging Russians to hack Clinton. They could not do it anyway to get the emails since they are deleted. They must already have done it.
Nevertheless many press responses ignore all this. Consider the Digital Journal article headline: “Trump encourages Russia to hack Clinton emails.” The New York Times is not much better as in an article it says: Donald Trump sensationally challenged Russia on Wednesday to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails as a furious Democratic campaign accused the Republican nominee of inviting foreign spies to meddle in the US presidential election.
He did not challenge Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails. They are deleted. He implied that if they did, if they released them the press would be interested and later mentioned the FBI as well. Another prestigious outlet, The Atlantic, goes on:
Even as some Trump supporters insisted he was just joking, several national security experts said they could not recall another instance of a major party candidate calling on a foreign power to spy on a U.S. citizen, much less on a political opponent. “Leaders who are serious about national security do not, even in jest, encourage foreign powers to spy on us,” said Timothy Naftali, co-director of New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War.
But Trump said nothing suggesting Russia should spy on the United States. What you have is more development of narratives linking up Trump and Russia in a bid to damage the Clinton candidacy. Maybe there is such a conspiracy but Trump’s remarks do not provide any evidence for it.
Whether by design or incompetence, Trumps’ words are deliberately misconstrued to fit in with the pattern of demonizing Trump that appears to be common in much press coverage of him. He is surely bad enough that his words need not be twisted just to make him look bad.
