[Danzig]

William Inboden, who served on the NSC during the George W. Bush administration, said Trump’s comments were “tantamount to treason.”

“Trump’s appeal for a foreign government hostile to the United States to manipulate our electoral process is not an assault on Hillary Clinton, it is an assault on the Constitution,” said Inboden, who now teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.


GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, who advised Mitt Romney, the party’s nominee in 2012, suggested that Trump’s remarks would have merited an immediate court-martial if they’d been made by anyone answering to the commander in chief

the briefest of statements from House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokesman, who wrote, “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”

Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, released a statement soon after that seemed to attempt to steer the campaign back upon saner streets: “The FBI will get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking [of the DNC’s emails]. If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences.”