Mass. reps rip Trump’s hack ‘joke’
Bay State congressmen yesterday blasted Donald Trump’s remarks inviting a Russian cyberwarfare attack on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — comments the Republican candidate insisted were meant as a joke.
“I don’t see any humor in calling on enemies of the United States to attack us,” freshman U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, said in an interview on Boston Herald Radio at the Democratic National Convention. “There’s no humor in that at all. And I think it’s frankly unprecedented for a politician in America to do that, especially someone running for president of the United States.”
Trump on Wednesday at a press conference said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later in the day he told an interviewer: “Of course I’m being sarcastic.”
U.S. spy agencies have linked a cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee to Russian hackers. Democrats have accused Trump of inviting Russia to meddle in the U.S. election, noting his compliments of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his disparagement of NATO, long a bulwark against Russian power.
“Who knows what Russia might come up with at the instigation of Donald Trump?” Moulton said. “Calling a foreign power, an enemy of the United States, to attack us through the internet in this case, is truly frightening for our country, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or anyone in between.”
“I think the idea that anybody, let alone the nominee from a major political party, would invite a foreign spy agency to hack into our State Department — there are some out there who say it’s treasonous,”
U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III agreed in a Herald Radio interview. “I don’t know if it crosses that line or not. It is absurd. It is dangerous. It should be disqualifying.”