He Didn't Ask Russia to Hack Hillary!

Josh Earnest is the press secretary for Barack Obama, which means he has to say things that he may not mean, to try to explain away Obama's views on things that Obama may not actually hold and, in fact, that Obama himself may not actually believe to be true.  Got it?

We need to keep that in mind, after Earnest decided to take on the accusations of the Russians hacking into the 2016 campaign.  He said on Wednesday, which is not the first time he has said it, that Trump had "asked Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's server" to find the 30,000 missing emails that Hillary still has not provided and, obviously, never will.  I don't recall precisely what Earnest said, but he was explicit that Trump had asked the Russians to hack in.

Now, let's start with one inconvenient truth.  At that point, when Trump made that obviously joking reference in the press conference in Florida, the server couldn't be hacked, as it was unplugged and on a shelf in the FBI's evidence locker.  Earnest knew that, Trump knew that and you and I did.  You can't hack an unplugged server, let alone an unplugged one that had gotten BleachBitted into submission.

With that as background, let's look at what Trump said in his exact words (and remembering that this was an answer to a press-conference question, add in with your mind's ear the usual Trumpian sarcastic tone):

"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. Hey, you know what gives me more pause? That a person in our government - Crooked Hillary Clinton - that a person in our government would delete or get rid of 30,000 emails. Now, if Russia or China or any other country has [my emphasis] those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I'd love to see them."

I heard the press conference live earlier in the year.  There is no question whatsoever that he was making that joke on the assumption that the emails, which could no longer be retrieved from their originating server, were already "out there" in cyberspace, because hacking had already occurred.

The joke was based on this -- Russia and China hack the heck out of the Internet now, and everyone knew it.  If anyone already had those emails, it was going to be Russia (and China).  So Trump's statement, or joke, or whatever, was at least a joke based on the notion that the Russians hack so much that they already had them.  Already.  Got it?  That was the punch line.  "Already had them."

He wasn't telling the Russians to try to hack our servers to get them; he was joking that they probably already had them in their own hacking files, and just needed to find them.  I know that's true because that is exactly what I was laughing at when I watched the press conference live -- that the FBI couldn't find the emails; that Hillary wouldn't turn them over, but the Russians probably already had them in their massive stores of hacked data and would get lots of credit from the U.S. press corps if they'd just find them.

It is contemptible on so many levels for Earnest to say what he did; and it is foolish for the press corps today to try to make an affirmative "Russia, please hack her server" interpretation, out of a joke based on the assumption that Russia already had the emails.

As I was writing that line, Bret Baier of Fox was on the air this second, actually saying that Trump had asked the Russians to hack our systems.  Et tu, Bret?  

If even Fox is casually misquoting that line, the Obamists have won.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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