White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the somewhat ludicrous claim Sunday that President Donald Trump was “making a joke” by repeatedly citing documents published by Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Following Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest Thursday, Trump said “I know nothing about WikiLeaks, it’s not my thing.”
A quick look at the tape showed the dozens of times Trump mentioned Wikileaks work in speeches during the final weeks of his campaign — after the organization published thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — as well as several tweets celebrating information gleaned from the emails.
“WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks,” Trump said on Oct. 10, 2016. At another event, he said the website was “like a treasure trove.”
“Clearly the President was making a joke during the 2016 campaign, certainly we take this serious,” Sanders told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, adding later: “The President was making a joke during the campaign. He was talking about the specifics of the case at that moment.”
Chris talks to @PressSec about Julian Assange and Wikileaks #FNS pic.twitter.com/I22ZFWz7gK
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) April 14, 2019