On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” while discussing reports of the Russian government hacking the Democratic National Committee, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said her opponent Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin.”
Partial transcript as follows:
WALLACE: Secretary Clinton, welcome back to “Fox News Sunday” and congratulations.
CLINTON: Thank you so much, Chris. And it really is good to be here.
WALLACE: Do you believe that Russia is behind the hacking and release of the DNC e-mails? And do you think that Vladimir Putin wants to defeat you or see you defeated and Donald Trump elected president?
CLINTON: Well, Chris, here’s what I think we know. We know that Russian intelligence services, which is part of the Russian government which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin, hacked into the DNC. And we know that he arranged for a lot of those e-mails to be released. And we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it’s saying that NATO wouldn’t come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia’s aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
WALLACE: So, are you suggesting that Putin would rather see him as president than you.
CLINTON: Well, I’m not going to jump to that conclusion, but I think laying out the facts raises issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy. We would not tolerate that from any other country, particularly one with whom we have adversarial positions. And for Trump to both encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election I think raises national security issues.
WALLACE: Trump after the backlash about his comments —
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be mightily rewarded by our press.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Trump said he was just being sarcastic.
CLINTON: Well, I think if you take his encouragement that the Russians hack into American e-mail accounts, if you take his quite excessive praise for Putin, his absolute allegiance to a lot of Russian wish-list foreign policy position, his effort then to try to distance himself from that backlash which rightly came not just from Democrats, but Republicans, independents and national security and intelligence experts leads us once again to include he is not temperamentally fit to be president and commander in chief.
WALLACE: You carved up Trump pretty good in your acceptance speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again. He could start by actually making things in America again. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Here is a guy you say is unfit to be president. Why is this election still too close?
CLINTON: Too many Americans feel, Chris, like they’ve been left out and left behind by our economy, by our government. I understand that frustration and frankly even that fear that some people feel that, you know, it’s just not working for them, and they are looking for answers.
I think the kind of inflammatory answers that Trump has provided, blame somebody, blame immigrants, blame Muslims, blame women, blame somebody is attractive in the first instance to people who are looking for answers, but what I’m counting on and what I believe, he has offered nothing to help people.
I believe we have put together an agenda to increase jobs, increase incomes, make our economy grow and be more fair, which is going to appeal to a majority of Americans.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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