[defen]

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"?

[jgwil2]

1) You really think Trump understands that?

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

[defen]

> 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"?

[nl]

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.

[defen]

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".

[lawnchair_larry]

Not only that, but this is obvious political riffing.

[jgwil2]

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.

[nl]

> 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.

[defen]

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

[nl]

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