Clinton Slams Trump’s ‘Unpatriotic’ Praise of Vladimir Putin

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton publicly condemned her Republican rival, Donald Trump, over his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin during Wednesday’s Commander-in-Chief Forum on NBC News.

"Last night was yet another test, and Donald Trump failed yet again," Clinton said during remarks at a press conference Thursday in White Plains, New York.

During NBC’s forum hosted by Matt Lauer, Trump praised Putin as a “leader” with an 82 percent approval rating in his country.

Lauer noted during the forum that Putin is a former KGB officer and “a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computers,” and wondered, "Do you want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?"

Trump replied, "Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment, OK? The fact is, look, it's not going to get him anywhere," later adding:

If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, "Oh, isn't that a terrible thing" — the man has very strong control over a country.

Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader. We have a divided country. We have a country where you have Hillary Clinton with her emails that nobody's ever seen where she deletes 33,000 emails, and that's after getting a subpoena from Congress. If you do that in private business, you get thrown in jail.

During her press conference, Clinton said Trump’s remarks during the forum are “more evidence that he is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander in chief.”

“Bizarrely, once again, he praised Russia's strongman, Vladimir Putin, even taking the astonishing step of suggesting that he prefers the Russian president to our American president,” she said. “Now, that is not just unpatriotic and insulting for the people of our country as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary. Because it suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do.”

According to NBC News, Clinton took six questions during Thursday’s press conference, her first formal press conference in 278 days.

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