Donald Trump’s tongue-in-cheek request that Russian hackers help find Hillary Clinton’s lost emails was clearly intended as a jab at political news media, although they repaid him by treating it as serious and it gave much of the Washington establishment the vapors.

It’s anyone’s guess how serious Trump is in his apparent admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but anyone who thinks the Republican is the only presidential nominee too closely tied to the tyrant in Moscow is delusional.