Hillary Clinton mocked Donald Trump on Friday for his appearance on the Russia TV network RT earlier in the week as the latest episode in campaign she likened to a “reality television show.”
Trump suddenly went silent during a live interview with Larry King that aired on RT Thursday, which his campaign later blamed on miscommunication because they thought the taping was for a podcast. But King later seemed to refute that claim, saying Trump had recorded a podcast interview separately.
During an appearance at a fundraising event in New York City Friday evening, Clinton was asked by someone in the audience, “do you have a response to Donald Trump appearing on Russian-funded television?”
Though she was walking away from the podium, Clinton stopped and shook her head with a smile, while people in the audience began to giggle.
“Every day that this goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It’s not a serious presidential campaign,” Clinton said, repeating a line she told reporters earlier in the day.
She added that it is “beyond one’s imagination” that a presidential candidate praise a Russian “autocrat” like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and suggested that Trump doesn’t understand everything that Putin has done, including invading and occupying Crimea.
Critics of Trump have panned the candidate for seemingly cozying to Putin, saying over the course of the election that he would “get along very well” with Putin as president and that Putin is “doing a great job.” He has also received backlash for encouraging the Russian government to find Clinton’s missing emails from her time as secretary of state.
But Trump continued to heap praise on Putin Wednesday during MSNBC’s Commander in chief forum when he said, “The man has very strong control over a country.”
He added, “It’s a very different system and I don’t happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”
