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Hillary Clinton Rips Donald Trump for Lauding Vladimir Putin Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin
(about 2 hours later)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hillary Clinton excoriated Donald J. Trump on Thursday for asserting that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, was a better leader than President Obama, saying Mr. Trump’s praise for the authoritarian leader of an adversarial power “is not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.” WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s campaign on Thursday reaffirmed its extraordinary embrace of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, signaling a preference for the leadership of an authoritarian adversary over that of America’s own president, despite a cascade of criticism from Democrats and expressions of discomfort among Republicans.
Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, seized on Mr. Trump’s assertion in a televised forum Wednesday that Mr. Putin’s incursions into neighboring countries, crackdown on Russia’s independent press and support for America’s enemies were no more troublesome than Mr. Obama’s transgressions. She said it showed that if elected, her Republican rival would be little more than a tool of Mr. Putin. “I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” said Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana on CNN, defending Mr. Trump by echoing his latest praise for the Russian leader, offered Wednesday night in a televised candidate forum.
“It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do, and then make excuses for him,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters in New York on Thursday morning at the White Plains airport, ratcheting up her oratory as polls indicate the race has tightened — and as Mr. Trump continues to say things rarely heard before from a major party presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton excoriated Mr. Trump for asserting that Mr. Putin is a better leader than President Obama, saying it was “not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.”
In the Wednesday night forum on NBC and MSNBC, which was devoted to national security issues, Mr. Trump twice denigrated America’s generals, suggested he would fire the country’s current military leadership and claimed, without offering evidence, that the intelligence officials who recently gave him a classified briefing about threats to the United States were not pleased with Mr. Obama. She seized on Mr. Trump’s assertion in the televised forum that Mr. Putin’s incursions into neighboring countries, crackdown on Russia’s independent news media and support for America’s enemies were no more troublesome than Mr. Obama’s transgressions. She said it showed that, if elected, Mr. Trump would be little more than a tool of Mr. Putin’s.
In a news conference before boarding her campaign plane, Mrs. Clinton appeared incredulous at times as she remarked upon Mr. Trump’s statements the night before, particularly about Mr. Putin. “It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do, and then make excuses for him,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters Thursday morning at the White Plains airport, stepping up her criticism as polls indicate the race has tightened — and as Mr. Trump continues to say things rarely heard before from a major party presidential nominee.
In the forum, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin that he had been a leader “far more than our president.” In the Wednesday forum, which was moderated by Matt Lauer of NBC and was devoted to national security issues, Mr. Trump twice denigrated America’s generals; suggested he would fire the country’s current military leadership; and insinuated — vaguely, unverifiably and without evidence — that the intelligence officials who recently gave him a classified briefing about threats to the United States had said that the president had flouted their advice.
And after Matt Lauer, the NBC anchor who moderated the event, highlighted Mr. Putin’s record, Mr. Trump shot back, “But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?” Mrs. Clinton delighted at the chance to change the subject from her uneven performance at the forum, under treatment by Mr. Lauer that many observers believed was harsher than his handling of Mr. Trump. Her campaign could barely contain its wonder that her opponents were now allowing her to chain Mr. Trump to a Russian leader widely seen as hostile to the United States.
In her news conference Thursday, Mrs. Clinton asked, “What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on Russia’s president?” In the forum, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin that he had been a leader “far more than our president,” and he praised Mr. Putin’s firm grip on Russia.
Mrs. Clinton was also withering in referring to Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States made a mistake by not seizing oil fields in Iraq and Libya after invading the countries. And after Mr. Lauer highlighted Mr. Putin’s record, Mr. Trump shot back, “But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?”
“The United States of America does not invade other countries to plunder and pillage,” she said. “We don’t send our brave men and women around the world to steal oil. And that’s not even getting into the absurdity of what is involved.” Such talk represents a remarkable break from the traditional boundaries of American political speech. And, as with his past provocations, Mr. Trump once again left his fellow Republicans scrambling to defend what many effectively conceded was indefensible.
Mrs. Clinton, who had faced a barrage of questions in her half of the forum about her use of a private email server as secretary of state, also used the news conference to try to drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and the leadership of his party. “Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters on Thursday in Washington, accusing the Russian leader of “conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks” on “our political system.”
“Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump about these statements,” she said. Mr. Ryan was referring to the hack of the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which American officials believe was conducted by Russian intelligence services. At the NBC forum, Mr. Trump disputed Russia’s guilt, telling Mr. Lauer the culprits were not definitively known.
Mr. Trump’s extended defense of Mr. Putin represented a remarkable break from the traditional boundaries of political oratory and appalled many members of his own party. Mr. Trump went even further on Thursday, saying in an interview on the Kremlin-backed Russia Today network that “it’s probably unlikely” the Russians were responsible for the hack and that Democrats “are putting that out.”
“Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters Thursday in Washington, accusing the Russian leader of “conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks” on “our political system.” In a fashion that would have been unheard-of for a Republican during or immediately after the Cold War, Mr. Trump has made improved relations with the Kremlin a centerpiece of his candidacy. And Russia has been a subplot of the campaign that Tom Clancy and John le Carre together may have been unable to conjure, complete with the apparent Russian hack of America’s political parties, a looming threat that Russian hackers may try to tamper with electronic voting machines, and Mr. Putin’s unsubtle preference for Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton.
He was referring to the hack of the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which American officials believe was conducted by Russian intelligence services. At the NBC forum, Mr. Trump disputed Russia’s guilt, telling Mr. Lauer the culprits were not definitively known. While railing against Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries, Mr. Trump has continually praised Mr. Putin’s government: He has hailed Mr. Putin’s tight control over Russian society, has hinted that he may not defend the NATO-aligned Baltic States formerly in Moscow’s sphere of influence, and for a time employed a campaign chief with close ties to Ukraine’s pro-Russian forces.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump and his campaign showed no indication of regret. Most extraordinarily, Mr. Trump used a news conference over the summer to urge the Russians to hack into Mrs. Clinton’s emails to find what messages the F.B.I. might have missed.
His aides did not reply to an email asking if the campaign wanted to clarify the candidate’s comments about Mr. Putin. It is all rather confounding — unless Mr. Trump is simply eyeing postelection business interests — for congressional Republicans, who evince little doubt that Moscow was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee. On Thursday, they volunteered the sort of hard-edge criticism of Mr. Putin more typical of conservatives discussing an adversary of the United States.
“These are the desperate attacks of a flailing campaign sinking in the polls, and characteristics of someone woefully unfit for the presidency of the United States,” Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement issued after Mrs. Clinton’s remarks Thursday. “He’s a thug,” said Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “He’s a dangerous and bad guy.”
Mr. Trump himself appeared mostly focused on the media coverage of the forum. But Mr. Rubio, who is running for re-election, has gotten behind Mr. Trump since withdrawing from the presidential primary, and declined to say whether Mr. Trump’s comments were out of bounds because he did not want to “be a commentator.”
“Wow, reviews are in — THANK YOU!” he wrote on Twitter. Even Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, perhaps Mr. Trump’s closest ally on Capitol Hill, appeared ill at ease when pressed about Mr. Trump’s statements.
With nine weeks until the election, a recent CNN/ORC poll showed Mr. Trump has gained ground against Mrs. Clinton, leading by two percentage points nationally among likely voters. Mr. Trump held a 51 percent-to-45 percent edge over Mrs. Clinton when voters were asked which candidate they trusted more to handle terrorism, though Mrs. Clinton held a solid lead when voters were asked which they trusted more on foreign policy. Asked whether political combat should stop at the water’s edge, Mr. Sessions paused for nearly 10 seconds before saying, “I’ve tried to adhere to that line pretty assiduously, but less and less does that get adhered to in the modern world.”
After spending much of August fund-raising, Mrs. Clinton’s events and comments this week have largely been focused on national security. On Thursday, she recalled being a senator from New York during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an experience she said had informed her thinking a decade later, when she was in the White House Situation Room with President Obama during the raid on a compound in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. For their part, Democrats were at once dumbfounded over Mr. Trump’s latest verbal excess, gleeful over a fresh opportunity to portray him as unpresidential and irritated that he had not been not pressed more aggressively by Mr. Lauer.
Mrs. Clinton said she would convene a bipartisan group of national security and counterterrorism experts on Friday, including the former homeland security secretaries Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano, and David Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director, to discuss the fight against the Islamic State. Mingling outside the Capitol on a broiling day, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, and Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, two of the longest-serving and bluntest-speaking members of Congress, found themselves uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
She also repeated an assertion she made on Israeli television earlier Thursday morning, that the Islamic State hopes Mr. Trump will win in November because it would stoke outrage among Muslims, weaken the United States and strengthen its movement. “If Rangel or Reid had said that, 15 years ago or five years ago, we would be through,” Mr. Reid said of Mr. Trump’s Putin praise. “Can you imagine somebody running for president who has acknowledged publicly that he likes Putin better than Obama? How about that one?”
“They hope that Allah delivers America to Donald Trump,” she said, citing a Time magazine article by Matthew G. Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Mr. Rangel interjected: “A communist leader that’s a potential enemy!”
After the news conference, Mrs. Clinton flew to North Carolina , for a rally to register African-American voters — where she seized the chance to again assail Mr. Trump’s comments denigrating Mr. Obama. Other Democrats, though, saw Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Putin as a bonanza, given the scrutiny of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. Representative Joseph Crowley of New York called Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Russians should hack into Mrs. Clinton’s emails “verbal treason” and said his “diarrhea of the mouth” would be his undoing.
“He prefers the Russian president to our president,” Mrs. Clinton said of her opponent, drawing jeers from the crowd at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. Democrats and even some Republicans said the fury would have been unceasing on the right had a Democratic presidential candidate held up the leader of a hostile power to deride a Republican president.
“Everything is a game. It’s like he’s living in his own celebrity reality TV program,” she said. “You know what, Donald, this is real reality.” Scholars could recall few parallels in modern American history. Only the campaign of Henry Wallace, who ran as the Progressive Party nominee in 1948, was so willing to align itself with Russia, the historian Richard Norton Smith said. “We’ve become to some degree numbed to this, saying, ‘That’s just Trump,’” he said. “And that’s dangerous.”
Mrs. Clinton’s aides said she would strive in the weeks ahead to present her own vision, not just prosecute the case against Mr. Trump, among other things with a series of speeches on her plans to spur economic growth and lift incomes. But she still faces scrutiny over her handling of classified information at the State Department, not to mention Mr. Trump’s unremitting attacks, a fact to which Mrs. Clinton sounded resigned on Thursday. In her news conference on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton invoked the right’s most venerated president, from whose library Mr. Pence appeared on CNN. “What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on Russia’s president?”
“I know he says outrageous things on a pretty regular basis, and I know that’s part of the coverage,” she said in White Plains. “I’m not asking for any special treatment. I know the road that I’m on. I’ve been on it for 25 years.” After the news conference, Mrs. Clinton flew to North Carolina to rally African-American voters — and seized the chance to again assail Mr. Trump’s comments. “He prefers the Russian president to our president,” Mrs. Clinton said in Charlotte.
But Mr. Trump showed no sign of regret. His aides did not reply to an email asking if the campaign wanted to clarify the candidate’s comments about Mr. Putin, and deemed Mrs. Clinton’s assault “the desperate attacks of a flailing campaign sinking in the polls.”
Mr. Trump himself appeared mostly focused on media coverage of the NBC forum. “Wow, reviews are in — THANK YOU!” he wrote on Twitter.