Donald Trump read from an article ripped from Sputnik News, the Kremlin-backed news outfit, that misattributed quotes to a Hillary Clinton adviser to make the case at a Monday rally that her advisors thought she could have “done something” about the Benghazi attacks.
Speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump held an article print-out in the air and made reference to Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal.
“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, as quoted by Newsweek. “This just came out a little while ago.”
“Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate,” Trump read from the article before dropping it on the ground dramatically.
But the words Trump was reading didn’t come from Blumenthal. Instead, he was reading a brief excerpt of an article from Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, which Blumenthal had emailed to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman whose hacked emails have been published in part this week on Wikileaks.