Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave a whirlwind news conference on Wednesday, vehemently denying that he has any business ties to the Russian government, even while encouraging Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's private email server.
Rumors have swirled for days that the Russian government was behind the hack and release of a trove of embarrassing emails from the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party's convention — and critics have suggested that the Kremlin dumped the emails to help Trump.
While Russia dominated Trump's Florida news conference on Wednesday morning, the billionaire touched on a head-spinning number of topics, delivering a deluge of sensational statements.
Here are his most outrageous lines:
1. To Russian hackers: “It would be interesting to see, I will tell you this, Russia, if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
2. On Vladimir Putin: “I don’t know who Putin is. He said one nice thing about me. … I never met Putin.”
3. On Hillary Clinton receiving classified briefings and Anthony Weiner: “Her No. 1 person, Huma Abedin, is married to Anthony Weiner, who’s a sleazeball and pervert. I'm not saying that, that's recorded history. I don't like Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets."
4. On Tim Kaine: “Her running mate Tim Kaine, who by the way did a terrible job in New Jersey — first act he did in New Jersey was ask for a $4 billion tax increase and he was not very popular in New Jersey and he still isn't. ... What? I mean Virginia.”
5. On President Barack Obama: "I think President Obama has been the most ignorant president in our history. His views of the world, as he says, ‘don't jive’ and the world is a mess.”
6. On Hillary Clinton’s lack of news conferences: “The reason is because there is no way she can answer questions because the job she has done is so bad."
7. To NBC News correspondent Katy Tur: “Be quiet, I know you want to, you know, save her.”
8. On Bill Clinton’s speech: “The story told by her husband last night, he left out the most interesting chapter, I won't get into that. The chapter that I really waited for because it was pretty boring, the chapter that I waited for, I never heard and he left it out.”
9. On Putin and the N-word (Common euphemism for "nigger" or "nigga"): “Putin has said things over the last year that are really bad things, OK? He mentioned the N-word one time, I was shocked to hear him mention the N-word. You know what the N-word is, right? He mentioned it, I was shocked;” Politico reported.
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