He literally said those exact words on live television.

For one thing, he literally didn’t. Prove me wrong.

Also, he figuratively didn’t.

I'll bite: https://youtu.be/-e-Vka_HkRU?t=107

Yeah, as I said.

You know this isn’t an actual sincere attempt to collude with Russia, right? People can’t seriously believe that’s what this is.

Not to mention, he was talking about Hillary’s lost emails, not hacking the democrats.

No, that didn’t happen. You’re very confused about the events.

Wow. We all saw it happen.

How do you reach a common ground with people who reject the evidence of their eyes and ears?

I would ask you this question. Let’s start by referencing the supposed incident in question. Where did your eyes/ears see and hear this?

You can't.

We absolutely didn’t. Show me if you know otherwise.

Please see nl's comment elsewhere in this thread.

This is at the level of people who claim they saw Sarah Palin say "I can see Russia from my house". If it really happened, and "we all saw it", it should be trivial for you to produce a video of Trump asking Russia to hack the Democrats.

Direct quote from Trump:

"Russia, if you are listening I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."

https://youtu.be/-b71f2eYdTc?t=20

From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...

The emails under discussion were on Hilary Clinton's personal email server, and had been deleted. So the two questions you should ask are:

1) How would a hack, initiated after Trump's statement, find those emails - even in principle?

2) Even if we posit that such a hack was requested, how does that transmute into a request to "hack the Democrats"?

1) You really think Trump understands that?

2) It's a direct request to hack the Democratic presidential candidate and party standard bearer.

> 2) It's a direct request to hack the Democratic presidential candidate and party standard bearer.

So if someone were to hack Trump's emails, do you think it would be an accurate statement to say that they "hacked the Republicans"?

While he was running for president as the candidate of the Republican party? Yes of course!

Does your argument really come down to trying to parse a difference between Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party?

I'd note the "hack the Democrats" was the OPs characterisation of what happened. If you'd prefer to claim that Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton I'm not going to try to argue that point.

I think "Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails" is entirely uncontroversial. Saying he asked the Russians to "hack" the "Democrats" involves two inferences and seems like a statement designed to maximize discord. The Russians are not in Donald Trump's chain of command, there are other ways to find her emails than hacking, and Hillary Clinton is not "the Democrats".

This will be my last post on the topic because it reminds of the "blue dress/green dress" thing someone posted way up thread. I'm sure you're posting in good faith, and I assure you I am too, but it is just not at all obvious to me why someone would say "Donald Trump asked the Russians to hack the Democrats" instead of "Donald Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails".

Not only that, but this is obvious political riffing.

Elsewhere you've asked people to prove that Trump made the statement, which people did. Please now prove that this was "obvious political riffing," whatever that means.

No, his statement, which was linked, was not in fact what the claim said.

Okay, he didn't say "the Democrats," he said Clinton's emails. Is that really better? Please prove he was joking.

> Even if we posit that such a hack was requested

Which we do, and was the whole point

> how does that transmute into a request to "hack the Democrats"?

Hillary Clinton (the person under discussion) was the Democratic candidate for president at the time.

You still haven't answered how a hack could find deleted emails?

I'm not arguing that Trump knows anything about how hacking works at all.