Trump and Russia...

Trump goes it alone on Russia

His call for Moscow to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails won him attention, but his foreign policy found few supporters on either side of the aisle.

By Katie Glueck

A day after Hillary Clinton made history, Donald Trump turned history on its head.

The nominee of the Republican Party — the party that takes credit for winning the Cold War — on Wednesday appeared to align himself with Russia over his Democratic opponent, in remarks that suggested to many he was urging Moscow to interfere in a U.S. election.

That break with longstanding bipartisan policy toward dealing with Russia, or any foreign nation, for that matter, succeeded in getting him the lion’s share of the media spotlight as Wednesday evening programming kicked off for rival Hillary Clinton’s Democratic National Convention. But it was a leap few fellow Republicans were ready to make — with some in the party suggesting it smacked of “treason.”

The backlash began immediately after Trump’s extended riff on Russia at a Wednesday morning press conference, in which he called for Russia to “find” and release 30,000 emails deleted from Clinton’s private email server. Trump went on to promise a better relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin if elected president, saying he’d “look at” easing sanctions and recognizing Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula—something at odds with current U.S. policy--but most of the focus came back to the emails.

“I will tell you this, Russia, if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Donald Trump said earlier Wednesday, referencing the thousands of emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent over her private email server that her lawyers had not turned over to the State Department, deeming them to be personal in nature. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He went on to add, on Twitter, "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!"

Those remarks, which came a day after Clinton became the first woman nominated as a major party’s presidential candidate, were “tantamount to treason,” said William Inboden, a member of the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, in an earlier interview with POLITICO.

“I thought it was a wildly irresponsible thing for any American to say, much less a candidate for the presidency of the United States,” said Tom Nichols, a former GOP Senate aide and a current professor at the Naval War College, when asked about Trump’s remarks. "It’s not just out of the mainstream—in terms of presidential candidates, it’s so far out of the mainstream, it’s a totally different solar system.”

Indeed, other Republicans who refrained from directly criticizing Trump also made clear that they view Russia as a major threat — and saw no role for Putin in the presidential race.

“Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Trump. “Putin should stay out of this election.”

Trump is no stranger to going it alone, nor to bucking the party line, but following the press conference, his campaign went into damage control mode, seeking to reset the widely drawn conclusion that Trump was urging Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. Adviser Jason Miller went on a tweetstorm insisting Trump only meant that Russia should turn over the emails to the FBI if they already had them, and not work pro-actively to acquire them.

“To be clear, Mr. Trump did not call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s e-mails today,” tweeted Jason Miller, a senior communications aide to the real estate mogul. “Trump was clearly saying that if Russia or others have Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, they should share them w/ FBI immed.” (A different Trump aide did not answer repeated inquiries on how Russia would acquire those emails without hacking.)

And in an excerpt of a Fox News interview set to air Thursday morning, Trump appears to further distance himself from the interview.

"Of course I'm being sarcastic. And they don't even know frankly if it's Russia. They have no idea if it's Russia, if it's China, if it's somebody else. Who knows who it is?" he says, according to an excerpt tweeted out by the network. "And what they said on those emails is a disgrace, and they're just trying to deflect from that."

But on Wednesday, Trump declined to say that he would urge Putin to stay out of American politics. “I’m not going to tell Putin what to do,” he said. “Why should I tell Putin what to do?”

The Clinton campaign pounced on the remarks.

"This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” said Jake Sullivan, one of Clinton’s senior policy advisers, in a statement. “That's not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue."

But it wasn’t just partisans. Several national security experts objected to Trump’s statements as well.

“The invitation to Russia to hack a presidential candidate's email messages is stunning and reckless,” said Matt Olsen, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “To the extent our adversaries take this seriously, it presents a threat to the integrity of our electoral process and our national security. “

Added George Little, a former Pentagon and CIA spokesman, "This is absolutely a national security issue, and it is yet another vivid example of Trump's complete lack of foreign policy experience. His campaign's disturbing coziness with Russia was already a worrying head-scratcher, and this latest episode of recklessness profoundly underscores that very real concern."

Nichols, a frequent Trump critic, noted that “we’re in a lot of hacking wars already.” But that doesn’t make encouraging more—which, in his view, is what Trump did—any more acceptable.

“It’s bad enough he doesn’t understand the gravity of what he said, but that he’s giving encouragement to a hostile foreign power is unconscionable,” Nichols said. “I don’t think he’s joking. He doubled down on it. Once off the cuff, it’s a joke. Twice, it’s policy.”