Trump’s Call for Russian Hacking Makes Even Less Sense After Mueller

For the first year of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump was a devoted exponent of the press conference. He seemed to revel in the format: the jousts with reporters, the free-associative possibilities, the chance to shock. But almost 1,000 days ago, Trump’s press conferences reached their apogee.

, Trump gave the final and weirdest press conference of his campaign. Calling the spectacle “bizarre even by Trump’s standards”—how naive I was!—I , “Just when it starts to seem that Donald Trump can’t surprise the jaded American media anymore, the Republican nominee manages to go just a little bit further.” There was much to chew over (and spit out) in Trump’s comments that day, but the most enduring moment came when the Republican nominee answered a question about Kremlin interference in the election.