John Podesta to Trump: Stop tweeting about me and do your job

President Trump has been talking about Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager a lot lately. So much so that he made a point to bring up John Podesta‘s name at the G-20 summit in Germany this Friday.

“Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!” Trump tweeted just before his widely anticipated meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. As many news outlets pointed out, Trump’s tweet doesn’t get the facts right. Podesta worked for the Clinton campaign, not the DNC. Additionally, the notion that international leaders at the G-20 would be talking about Podesta is a little hard to believe.

Either way, Podesta wasn’t going to take Trump’s assault lying down. In a six-part tweet storm, he expressed his disbelief that the President of the United States would be preoccupied with him while at an international summit of world leaders.

Taking it further, Podesta penned an op-ed in The Washington Post, saying that he first heard of Trump’s tweets while taking cross-country road trip with his wife. “I was quite surprised to discover that — at least according to President Trump — I am the talk of the Group of 20 meeting,” he wrote.

On one level, the president’s tweet is so obviously wrong and so evidently self-serving that the temptation is simply to ignore it. But, because he is the president, his words warrant a response.

What I do know is this, which is why I’m choosing to respond to Trump’s tweet: The Russians stole my emails. When they did that, they committed a crime. They also invaded my privacy, and the privacy of a multitude of friends, family and colleagues with whom I communicated. That, combined with vicious lies spread by the alt-right media such as the so-called Comet Ping Pong conspiracy, exposed them to potential harm, as was evidenced by the shooting at Comet. The crime the Russians committed, as the intelligence community has concluded, was for the purpose of helping Trump get elected president.

Podesta went on to say that Trump should have the “backbone to stand up against Russian interference in U.S. democracy,” instead of maligning U.S intelligence agencies to Putin.

“As president, Trump is supposed to be doing his job representing the United States in a respectable fashion to make sure we maintain and enhance our standing around the world. Instead, he has his face glued to his phone. It’s really sad that the U.S. president can’t get his head in the game even at the G-20 summit of world leaders.”

Read Podesta’s op-ed at WaPo here.

Featured image: Center for American Progress

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.