Wingnut Week In Review: From Russia, With Love?

While Hillary Clinton was shattering that glass ceiling, Donald Trump pulled off a first of his own: the first presidential candidate to invite a cyber attack against the United States.

This presidential election long ago entered the realm of “You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” but Donald Trump has once again gone where no presidential candidate has gone before. First, Trump threw the media and pretty much everyone else into a tizzy when he suggested, in an interview with the New York Times on the eve of his formal acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination, that under his leadership the US might not come to the assistance of NATO members if Russia were to invade them, unless they “have fulfilled their obligation to us.” President Obama just swore unwavering support for the new rapid reaction force to protect the most vulnerable North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Trump has previously expressed admiration for autocratic Russian President Vladimir Putin, shrugging off Putin’s invasions of other countries and assassinations of his enemies. “At least he’s a leader,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Though at first the Trump/Putin “bromance” seemed to be as much a performance as everyone thought Trump’s candidacy would be, it turned out Trump’s not just a Putin admirer and wannabe autocrat himself. He’s heavily reliant on money from Russian oligarchs close to Putin, who invest in his business ventures, especially after his bankruptcies. Conservative columnist George Will has suggested that Trump won’t release his tax returns because they will show his ties to Russian oligarchs. Trump’s connections to Russia aren’t just monetary, either. Trump’s national campaign manager Paul Manafort spent most of the last ten years working as the top campaign and communications advisor for pro-Russian Ukraine president and close Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.

Then came the eerily Watergate-like hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, that led to the ouster of chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, no less. It seemed perfectly timed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and benefit Donald Trump. The emails were released by WikiLeaks, but the hack appeared to be carried out by someone using a Russia-based virtual private network (VPN) service and displaying other “heavy traces of Russian activity.”

Benjamin Wittes, a security expert at the Brookings Institution said, “I think the most likely explanation is that someone in Russian intelligence, probably very high up, decided to help Donald Trump,” though Wittes added that there’s no solid evidence to back this up. Not yet, anyway. The FBI is now investigating the suspected state-sponsored Russian theft of emails and documents form the DNC’s computer networks, as well as whether Clinton’s aides were hacked. The FBI is also investigating whether the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s computers have been hacked.

Why would Russia hack in to DNC emails in an apparent attempt to help get Trump elected? Why would Putin want to help Trump and/or hurt Clinton? Well, Putin has made no secret that he and party prefer Trump over Clinton. Trump’s position that he would not automatically support NATO allies, appeals to Putin, who has threatened some of them. Likewise Trump’s support for letting Russia fight ISIS in Syria. Trump’s policies would allow an unprecedented expansion of Russia’s power and wealth. Besides, Putin holds a grudge against Clinton, accusing her of encouraging protests with her criticism of Russia’s 2011 elections.

The Kremlin dismissed the hacking claims as ridiculous, and the issue might have fallen out of the news cycle, at least until the FBI finished its investigation. But then Trump, ever unpredictable, did the unthinkable. In one of the most unhinged press conferences ever, Trump first claims that he doesn’t know Putin and never met him..

“I never met Putin, I don’t know who Putin is.” Except that, Trump bragged on the GOP debate stage about chatting with Putin, and said during a National Press Club luncheon that he was in Moscow and that he spoke “directly with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.” Besides, it’s hard to believe that in all Trump’s business trip to Russia to court investors that he never once met or talked to Putin.

And then it happened. Trump proposed the very thing that forced Richard Nixon to resign the office Trump seeks. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump invited Russia to launch a cyberattack against America, and interfere in the presidential election, by hacking into Hillary Clinton’s emails from when she was secretary of state.

And then things got crazy.

• Fox News Bret Baier wrote Trump’s remarks off as a “joke.”
• Trump’s comments caused dictionary lookups for “treason” to spike.
• The New York Daily News recycled the chant from the Republican convention, with this headline: LOCK HIM UP!: Comrade Trump’s treasonous call for Russia to Hack Hil.
• CNN Panelist Christine Quinn called Trump’s remarks, “almost treasonous.”
• Former CIA chief Leon Panetta called Trumps loyalty to the US into question, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “He is truly not qualified to be president of the United States.”
• Through his spokesman, House Speaker Paul Ryan boldly denounced Russia’s possible involvement in the presidential election, without ever mentioning Trump calling on Russia to help him out and hack some more. No word on whether Ryan formally asked that Trump be denied access to classified information, as he did with Clinton.
• A petition to bar Trump from security briefings has receive nearly 100,000 signatures.
• Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to clean up trumps mess, telling reporters at a Republican National Committee press conference, “What he means was that if Russia has them, they should turn them over to the FBI.”
• Though he warned of “serious consequences” if the FBI determined Russia was behind the hack attack, and is trying to influence the election, poor Indiana governor Mike Pence tried to defend Trump’s comments by invoking Abraham Lincoln.

Trump later appeared on “Fox & Friends,” to try as pass the whole thing off as a sarcastic joke.

If we believe that, the joke is on us.

A Man You Can Bait With A Tweet

Hillary Clinton showed she knows how to get under Trump’s skin. Her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention included this deadly zinger for Donald Trump: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

Trump wasted no time taking the bait, and taking to Twitter.

Crooked Hillary Clinton made up facts about me, and "forgot" to mention the many problems of our country, in her very average scream!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

"@AnnCoulter: "I believe in science" Dem code for "we're shutting down coal mines, steel plants and any other remaining manufacturing""

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

The dishonest media didn't mention that Bernie Sanders was very angry looking during Crooked's speech. He wishes he didn't make that deal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

The dishonest media didn't mention that Bernie Sanders was very angry looking during Crooked's speech. He wishes he didn't make that deal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

True to form, he even came up with a nickname for former New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

"Little" Michael Bloomberg, who never had the guts to run for president, knows nothing about me. His last term as Mayor was a disaster!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

Here’s the best of the rest in wingnuttery this week.

• Apparently, a lot of speakers at the Democratic National Convention got under Donald Trump’s skin. [“You know what I wanted to. I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard,” Trump said at a press conference in Florida](http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/dnc-sends-trump-into-toddler-rage-i-wanted-to-hit-a-couple-of-those-speakers-so-hard/). ”I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor.“ Well, when you can’t win an argument with your ”very good brain," you resort to your fists.
• Trump literally cannot take the heat. During a rally at the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Va., Trump stopped in the middle of the speech to whine about the hotel’s air conditioning, and threatened not to pay the venue. Never mind that the doors were held open for 2 hours, in 90 degree heat, to let attendees enter the ballroom, and that a ballroom filled to capacity with human bodies each emitting heat is a challenge for anyone to keep cool. Trump will never miss a chance to skip out on a bill
• North Carolina Republicans thought they spotted a Honduras flag on vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s lapel, and lost it. There was one problem. What they mistook for a Honduran flag was the symbol for Blue Star Families, which Kaine wore to honor his son, a Marine.
• Ah, white fragility. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly responded to First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech, and said that the slaves who built the White House were “well fed and had decent lodgings.” O’Reilly was shocked — shocked — when historical rebuttals to his defense of slavery poured in from every corner of the internet. Slaves didn’t just build the White House they lived there and worked there, when slave-owning presidents brought the human property to Washington with them. (Including Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson.) O’Reilly took to television to whine about the pushback and claim that, “Liberals want me dead.” No, Bill. Not dead. We’d settle for retired.
• Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes lashed out at Hillary Clinton for failing to acknowledge that boys could grow up to be president too. Never mind that it’s already been proven that they can, like 44 times in a row.
• Republicans has a meltdown over actor Bradley Cooper’s presence at the Democratic convention, which he attended with his girlfriend, because he starred in American Sniper. Apparently, conservatives forgot it was just a movie, and that Cooper was just an actor playing a part.
• Conservatives lost their minds over gender neutral bathrooms at the DNC. “Fox & Friends” co-host Tucker Carlson said, “Everyone should come visit one and see the reality of it. It’s unbelievable. … I mean the whole thing was like an alternate reality.”
• Rudy Giuliani said during a GOP Press conference in Philadelphia that it might be a good idea to put electronic monitoring tags on people on the terror watchlist. “I still think it might be a good idea, I’d have to look at all the legal ramifications of it,” the former mayor of New York City, told reporters.
• Radio host Bryan Fischer declared that “it is not possible for homosexual behavior to be a constitutional right,” because rights come from God and God would never sanction homosexuality.