Donald Trump roiled disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner and cast his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, as “a problem” during a lengthy Saturday rant at a Golden, Colorado, rally where he dug in on the latest bombshell FBI revelation.
Trump ripped Weiner as “a major, major, major sleaze,” and bragged about calling “him correctly” in past social media posts.
“Perhaps, through this other investigation, and that’s the investigation of a person that over the years I’ve known a little bit and watched,” the Republican nominee said. “Did I call him correctly? Did anybody see? It’s called good judgment. It’s called good instincts.”
FBI Director James Comey announced on Friday that the agency had discovered new emails related to its probe into Clinton’s use of a private server. Reports later indicated the additional emails uncovered were in connection with an investigation into Weiner over allegations he sexted with a 15-year-old girl.
“If you check out the tweets, or if you check out whatever it is I wrote about him, it was so perfect,” Trump said. “And that was done a long time ago. But they found, by looking at Anthony Weiner, a major major major sleaze, they found what may be some of the 33,000 missing and deleted emails.”
Trump said Clinton has “bad” instincts “when the emails are on Anthony Weiner’s — whatever.”
The New York businessman also asked whether Clinton would keep Abedin after the latest revelations.
“Is she going to keep Huma?” Trump asked. “Huma’s been a problem. Do we agree? Huma. Huma’s been a problem. I wonder if Huma’s going to stay there.”
“And I hope they haven’t given Huma immunity,” he continued. “Because it seemed like every person who walked down the sidewalk got immunity. I hope they didn’t give Huma immunity because she knows the real story. She knows what’s going on. She knows what’s going on.”
Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta assured reporters earlier Saturday that Abedin had done “nothing that calls into question anything.”
During the Colorado rally, Trump nevertheless took pride in having previously suggested that Weiner was a security risk, and mocked those who thought he was wrong for doing so.
“How can you have your top person married to this guy?” he asked. “And everyone said, ‘Oh one thing has nothing to do with the other.’ Well, it does. It turned out, it does. And this is very serious stuff.”
For years, Trump has lambasted Weiner. In 2013, when Weiner was seeking the mayor’s office in New York City, Trump posted a Vine demanding that “no perverts” should be elected to the office. He later called for Abedin to “dump the sicko Weiner,” predicted Weiner would be “back sexting with a vengeance” after the 2013 mayoral race, and mocked Weiner’s revealed sexting identity “Carlos Danger.”
In August, Trump alleged that Weiner was “a major security risk as a collector of info” due to his marriage to Abedin, after a bombshell story broke that Weiner had allegedly been sexting with an underage girl, sparking the current investigation.
Trump himself is under scrutiny for allegations of past sexual misconduct that arose after a leaked tape showed him boasting of being able to make unwanted sexual advances on women, to which a fleet of women came forward in the following weeks alleging that Trump did exactly that to them. Trump has vehemently denied those claims.
The FBI’s announcement on Friday threw a wrench into an already turbulent presidential campaign with just 11 days before Election Day, coming as Clinton held leads Trump, in national polls and surveys in key battleground states.
As reported by Business Insider