Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton may not have much in common (one is the leader of their country, the other is not), but both recently drew attention back to their roles in the historic 2016 presidential election.
The Russian president hinted on Thursday that Russians may have actually been involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee, although he continued to deny that they were connected to the Russian government. "If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia," Putin said, according to a report by The New York Times.
[salon_video id="14774210"]Nevertheless, Putin emphasized that "we’re not doing this on the state level."
Putin's comments came a day after Clinton made some controversial statements herself. On Wednesday, she said that she inherited "nothing" from the Democratic Party which was "bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong."
This prompted an angry Twitter outburst by the Democratic National Committee's former director of science Andrew Therriault, according to The Washington Post. Although the tweets have since been taken down, the Washington Post recorded them as saying that "I'm not willing to let my people be thrown under the bus without a fight."
Therriault argued that the DNC data never had the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as "even close to safe" and insisted that the Clinton campaign "thought they knew better." He also urged the "DNC data folks" to know that Clinton's assertions were "fucking bullshit."
Therriault later told the Post that he took down the tweets "to avoid further drama." Of course, he wasn't alone among former Democratic professionals to object to Clinton's comments. TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier and former Democratic National Committee aide John Hagner both chimed in as well.
Shares