by digby
Donald Trump: “I think I read that and I heard it”@LesterHoltNBC: “Where?”Trump: “I will report back to you” https://t.co/eAHkzFPEra
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) June 23, 2016
NBC’s Lester Holt asked Trump what proof he’d seen that Clinton’s server had been hacked. Trump proceeded to argue that it was illegal for Clinton to have a private email server in the first place and lamented that she would not be charged because of a “rigged system.”
“You don’t know that it hasn’t been [hacked],” Trump said. “What she did is illegal. She shouldn’t have had a server.”
When Holt pressed Trump to say what evidence he’d seen of a hack, Trump struggled to respond.
“I think I read that and I heard it and somebody—” Trump said.
“Where?” Holt asked.
“Somebody gave me that information,” Trump said. “I will report back to you.”
This is what he said in his speech:
[Clinton’s] server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China. Sure they have it. Putting all of America and our citizens in danger, great danger. Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. We may not know what’s in those deleted emails. Our enemies probably know every single one of them. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be the president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.
Her financial backers in communist China …
Remember when everyone called Ted Cruz Joe McCarthy for implying that Chuck Hagel had been taking money from North Korea? John McCain admonished him publicly over it. Everyone was aghast. But Trump has so lowered the bar for decency that he can say this in a formal speech and it doesn’t even garner any notice.
Update: There’s more:
Donald Trump sleep-walked back his remark that Hillary Clinton was ‘asleep’ during the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi Libya in 2012, saying whether Clinton was snoozing or not she was ‘asleep at the wheel.’
He modified his comment a handful of times, saying Clinton ‘might have been sleeping’ and that the attack went on for ‘a long time.
Trump got a wake up call about his comment in an appearance on NBC News Thursday, when Lester Holt asked him about his comment during a blistering speech Wednesday.
Trump had said in his anti-Clinton speech that Hillary ‘spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched’ as secretary of state.
‘Among the victims was our late Ambassador Chris Stevens. I mean what she did with him was absolutely horrible. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed. That’s right. When the phone rang, at 3:00 in the morning, Hillary Clinton was sleeping,’ Trump said, in one of the harshest lines of his attack.
Holt asked Trump about the comment, saying that fact-checkers found the attack occurred during the day. Politifact reported that the attack occurred at 3:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time.
‘It happened all during the day and it was going on for a long period of time,’ Trump responded, as Holt pressed him.
‘Excuse me, it was going on for a long period of time,’ Trump continued.
‘And she was a sleep at the wheel. Whether she was sleeping or not – who knows if she was sleeping? She might have been sleeping,’ Trump continued.
Then he tried to knock down the idea that she was awake because she sent a tweet.
‘Why, because she put out a Tweet. Somebody said she put out a tweet therefore she wasn’t be sleeping. Nobody else could put out a tweet?’
‘I can tell you this, whether she was sleeping or not – and she might have been sleeping – it was a disaster.
There was no tweet.
.