Clinton campaign: Trump still has ‘odd bromance’ with Putin
A top aide to Hillary Clinton is tweaking Donald Trump over news that his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has resigned.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook argued Manafort’s resignation showed that ties between Trump aides and pro-Russian elements in Ukraine are “untenable.”
{mosads}”[T]this is not the end of the story. It’s just the beginning,” Mook said in a statement. “You can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn’t end the odd bromance Trump has with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Manafort resigned as Trump’s chairman, the campaign announced Friday, days after the GOP nominee promoted a former executive of the conservative website Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon, as CEO of his campaign. Trump also named Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, which essentially demoted Manafort.
Manafort’s resignation came amid new scrutiny over his involvement with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. A New York Times investigation last week finding more than $12 million in payments secretly earmarked for Trump, while other reports questioned whether Manafort had properly disclosed his work as a foreign agent.
Mook slammed Trump’s “propensity to parrot Putin’s talking points” and went after two Trump advisers by name, Carter Page and Mike Flynn, for their “deep ties to Russia.”
The Washington Post reported recently that Page, “a little-known adviser” to Trump, offered “effusive praise” for Putin while speaking to Washington foreign policy experts in June and criticized U.S. policy while speaking in Moscow.
Flynn, a retired Army general who accompanied Trump for his first classified intelligence briefing his week, acknowledged giving a paid speech and attending a party for the Kremlin-backed RT television network last year in Moscow, according to the Post.
Clinton’s campaign also alluded to remarks Trump made last month, when he said he hopes Russian hackers could obtain the former secretary of State’s emails. He later
said the remark was sarcastic.
Mook said it is “time for Donald Trump to come clean on his own business dealings with Russian interests, given recent news reports about his web of deep financial connections to business groups with Kremlin ties.”
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