MSNBC host Katy Tur on Monday called out President Trump for claiming he was joking at a campaign rally when he told Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“He didn’t say that at a rally. He said that at a news conference in front of a bunch of reporters in the middle of the Democratic National Convention after [Democratic National Committee] DNC emails were already being leaked,” Tur said on her MSNBC program just days after Trump made the comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
{mosads}Trump suggested in a two-hour long speech at CPAC that he was being “sarcastic” when he asked the Kremlin to find “30,000 emails that are missing” during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I’ve learned — because with the fake news, if you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience,” he said. “If you say something like ‘Russia, please if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails, please, Russia, please, please get us the emails.’”
Tur pointed out that Trump made the remarks at a July 2016 news conference and that he appeared to make it clear at the time that he wasn’t joking. Tur showed footage from the conference in which the MSNBC host pressed Trump about his comments.
“You said the Russians, I welcome them to find those 30,000 emails. Does that not give you pause?” Tur asked at the time.
“Nope, it gives me no pause,” Trump said.
“Gave him no pause,” Tur said on her show Monday. “The president’s trying to say it’s a big joke. I was there in the moment. He wasn’t joking. I gave him an out. He did not take that out, as a joke.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller is currently investigating Russia’s election interference and whether Moscow colluded with Trump’s 2016 campaign.
According to an indictment from Mueller, Russian operatives made their first attempt to hack Clinton’s servers the same day Trump called on them to find her deleted emails.