Hillary Clinton: ‘China, If You’re Listening, Why Don’t You Get Trump’s Tax Returns?’

Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the conclusion from the Mueller report’s finding by mocking then-candidate Donald Trump’s statement about Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016.

Partial transcript as follows:

MADDOW: But, I mean, as somebody who has confronted these things in a leadership position and somebody whose been on the sharp end of this as a target, do you feel like if the U.S. government really cared and was motivated and wasn’t intending to stop this from happening, there are things that we could do, we could be effective, we could stop this, and we’re just not choosing those policy options?

CLINTON: Absolutely. And we have evidence of that.

On Election Day in 2018, we know that our government used cyber tools to shut down a lot of the sites that they feared could be interfering. So, number one, that tells us they know. Two, they took action to stop them.

I think that’s just literally the tip of the spear, though. I think there is so much more that could and should be done.

And, you know, there are a lot of people. You can read them online. You can read their academic work. They have all kinds of ideas about what to do to protect our systems.

The Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t at all go forward with some of the bipartisan legislation that was meant to secure our elections under orders from the White House.

Now, why is that? Well, because they think it helped them. And the Republicans look at the Trump White House and say, well, you know, the Russians probably did help them, you know, just whatever extent we may not yet know, so we’re not going to go there. We’re going to do what they tell us.

Imagine, Rachel, that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show, and that person said, you know, the only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians is China. So, why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us.

MADDOW: I hereby tonight ask China —

CLINTON: That’s right. And not only that, China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns. I’m sure our media would richly reward you.

Now according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open.

So, if after this hypothetical Democratic candidate says this on your show, within hours, all of a sudden, the IRS offices are bombarded with incredibly sophisticated cyber tools looking for Trump’s tax returns, and then extracts and them and then passes them to whatever the new WikiLeaks happens to be and they start being unraveled and disclosed — nothing wrong with that.

I mean, if you’re going let Russia get away with what they did and are still doing according to Christopher Wray, the current FBI director, who said that last week, they’re in our election systems. We’re worried about 2020, he said.

So, hey, let’s have a great power contest, and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else. Just saying that shows how absurd the situation we find ourselves in.

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