Clinton fires back at Trump: ‘You asked Russia to hack me on national television’

Hillary Clinton offered one of her most direct rebukes of President Trump in months on Thursday after Trump accused her of colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania Wednesday night.

At the rally Wednesday night, Trump told an arena of supporters that there was “collusion between Hillary, the Democrats and Russia” during the 2016 election, despite offering no evidence for his claim. An intelligence community assessment in 2017 concluded that Russia’s efforts were aimed at undermining the Clinton campaign.

{mosads}”There was a lot of collusion with them and Russia and lots of other people,” Trump added during the rally.

“Seriously, you asked Russia to hack me on national television,” Clinton responded in a tweet Thursday afternoon.

Seriously, you asked Russia to hack me on national television. https://t.co/YPktJyQ7Gx

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 11, 2018

Clinton’s message referred to the president’s comments at a news conference on the campaign trail in 2016, where he appeared to call on Russia directly to find emails supposedly deleted from Clinton’s private email server used during her time at the State Department.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at the time, adding: “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The president has accused his former opponent of collusion with Russians before. In April, Trump quoted a Washington Post columnist who alleged that Clinton had sought compromising information on Trump from Russian sources during the campaign, which fact-checkers have found to be false.

“We already have a smoking gun about a campaign getting dirt on their opponent, it was Hillary Clinton,” Trump tweeted at the time, quoting the writer. “How is it OK for Hillary Clinton to proactively seek dirt from the Russians but the Trump campaign met at the Russians request and that is bad?”

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to Clinton in his own tweet Thursday afternoon, accusing the Clinton campaign of consorting with “foreign agents” to fund the creation of Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia.

“You should really sit this one out,” he added.

Your campaign and the DNC spent over $12,000,000.00 working with foreign agents to creat a fake dossier with them… you should really sit this one out.

Then again, keep going. Every time you talk we win. We appreciate the support. https://t.co/sgU5zOwpwb

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 11, 2018