Donald Trump orders NBC’s Katy Tur to ‘be quiet’
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tells a female reporter to "be quiet" during a news conference after she asks him to explain why he would urge Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails. (Reuters)
To understand the dynamic between Donald Trump and the media, you really just need to watch one minute of one news conference on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters in South Florida, the Republican presidential nominee encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email account and produce deleted messages. This, of course, comes after he denied that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails on his behalf.
[Donald Trump’s falsehood-laden press conference, annotated]
"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said.
NBC News reporter Katy Tur surely spoke for many journalists when she followed up that surprising statement with a question: "Do you have any qualms about asking a foreign government — Russia, China, anybody — to interfere, to hack into the system of anybody's in this country?"
"That's up to the president," Trump replied.
Um, yeah. And you want to be the president, Donald Trump. The question was whether it is responsible for you — a person who wants to be president — to promote Russian hacking.
Trump didn't want to talk about that; he wanted to talk instead about how Vladimir Putin "has no respect" for the current president. Tur tried to steer him back to her original inquiry and asked again, "Does that not give you pause?"
"No, it gives me no pause," Trump said. "If they have them, they have them. We might as well — hey, you know what gives me more pause? That a person in our government, crooked Hillary Clinton — here's what gives me pause. Be quiet. I know you want to save her. That a person in our government, Katy, would delete or get rid of 33,000 emails. That gives me a big problem."
Tur later quoted an old tweet in which Trump encouraged hackers to target President Obama.
