13 Times Russian Hacking Came Up In The Presidential Campaign

[smilesammich 10,727]

not to mention another instance of trump attempting to gaslight us all..

On July 27, Donald Trump created one of the most surreal moments of the presidential campaign, when he encouraged Russians to hack his opponent's email.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you'll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said, speaking about Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from her private email account from her time as Secretary of State. "I think you'll probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

So it was a bit of a surprise when on Monday morning, he tweeted:

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Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?

8:21 AM - 12 Dec 2016

• 7,1587,158 Retweets
• 24,10724,107 likes

The tweet fits a pattern that Trump has employed before, using Twitter to spread misinformation that fits a narrative he wants to spin. Last month, he insisted that he, in fact, won the popular vote, but that "millions" of people voted illegally and handed that win to Hillary Clinton. Likewise, this tweet plays into a story that the hacks are only in the news now because Democrats want to blame the Russians for their loss in November.

So to be clear: many people (including Trump himself) did bring it up. The topic came up in general-election debates, and both he and his opponent addressed it in their answers. Throughout the campaign, there were suspicions and investigations into the possibility that Russians were behind not only a hack of the Democratic National Committee — the one Trump referenced in the above quote — but also a hack of Clinton adviser John Podesta's emails and state voting registration systems.