Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort said the public and the press took his boss’ words out of context earlier Wednesday when he joked about Russia turning over thousands of Hillary Clinton’s unaccounted-for emails from when she was secretary of state.
“First of all, he didn’t encourage anybody to hack,” Manafort told Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “Secondly, what he said was the 33,000 illegally deleted emails are still missing and he was making a sarcastic point about the 33,000 emails.”
But Kelly pushed back, asking Manafort why, if Trump was being sarcastic, did he reiterate that message on Twitter, giving some the impression he was instructing Russia to hack Clinton’s personal items to find the deleted messages.
If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016
Manafort explained the reason for Trump’s message and bringing Clinton’s email scandal back into the news cycle was to remind Americans of what could have happened to classified information she sent and received during President Obama’s first term.
“The bottom line of the whole thing is that as far as what people should be outraged about is that anybody could have hacked into the secretary of state,” Manafort said, refocusing the conversation away from Trump.
“What we mean is that the American people should be outraged by the server being put in a compromising position.”
