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Trump stirs the DNC in Philadelphia
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 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
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This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
July 27, 2016
By Jim Barnes
Philadelphia—It wasn’t that long ago that presidential nominees took time off from the campaign trail during their rival’s convention week. Part of this unofficial cease-fire was a result of tradition, but the candidate who wasn’t being nominated that week knew that it was next to impossible to penetrate the media coverage that focuses, at times obsessively, on a convention that’s underway.
But on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump showed that it is possible to break through—big time. At a press conference in Florida, Trump said he hoped that Russian hackers—suspected of hacking the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee that produced the leak of embarrassing staff email exchanges leading to the resignation of its chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz—might be able to locate some 30,000 emails that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had deleted from her personal server after she left her job as Secretary of State.[1]
Trump’s comments not only dominated political news in Philadelphia, but also prompted a rebuke from the convention podium on Wednesday night by a featured speaker, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. “Today, Donald Trump once again took Russia’s side,” declared Panetta. “Donald Trump is asking one of our adversaries to engage in hacking or intelligence efforts against the United States to affect our election. As someone who was responsible for protecting our nation from cyberattacks, it’s inconceivable to me that any presidential candidate would be this irresponsible. Donald Trump cannot become our Commander in Chief,” urged Panetta, to the cheers of Democratic delegates at the Wells Fargo Center.
“Trump’s strength is disruption, his use of controversy to dominate the media,” observed veteran Democratic presidential campaign operative Tad Devine, who was a senior adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination. “I think it’s a deliberate choice that he and his team have made,” said Devine of Trump’s provocative style. “I think that’s how this campaign is going to play out to the end.”
Clinton was also busy during the Republican convention, appearing at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati on the opening day of the GOP confab in Cleveland. The next day, she was addressing labor allies in Las Vegas. But she did not puncture the convention story in Cleveland the way Trump did in Philadelphia.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer at Ballotpedia who has covered every Democratic and Republican national convention since 1984. He is in Cleveland and Philadelphia for Ballotpedia in July. Contact media@ballotpedia.org with interview inquiries.
See also
- Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016
- Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016
- Democratic National Committee
- Democratic National Convention, 2016
