Desperate Media Accuses Trump of "Treason" For Joke About Hillary's Deleted Emails

"It’s just one more example of the reckless and dangerous comments that Donald Trump makes that compromises American foreign policy objectives," said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that Trump's comments were "beyond the pale" because he was "in fact asking the Russians to engage in American politics." Later during a panel at the University of Pennsylvania, Panetta ramped up his rebuke, calling Trump’s remarks a “threat to our national security.”

An aide to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who has endorsed Trump, added, meanwhile, that "Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug" and that it should stay out of the U.S. election.

“The United States should not tolerate Russian meddling in November’s election,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.). “Period.”

Philip Reiner, a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration, called Trump a "scumbag animal."

"Hacking email is a criminal activity. And he's asked a foreign government — a murderous, repressive regime — to attack not just one of our citizens but the Democratic presidential candidate? Of course it's a national security threat," he added.

And William Inboden, who served on the NSC during the George W. Bush administration, said Trump's comments were "tantamount to treason."

"Trump's appeal for a foreign government hostile to the United States to manipulate our electoral process is not an assault on Hillary Clinton, it is an assault on the Constitution," said Inboden, who now teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

If you or I did what Trump just did we would be charged with treason. Attorney General Lynch?

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) July 27, 2016

"One of the things that has happened in the United States and Europe is the total dethroning of the 'establishment media.' The authority of established media across the United States, and I believe Europe as well, has been destroyed. To some extent by our own sins, to some extent by the fact that people have alternatives now, they communicate unmediated, through the Internet. And one of the common elements I have noticed is the hostility directed at the media, at physical representatives of the media."

"...I think it’s the leveling of access to mass communication. Twenty years ago you had to own a $250 million printing press to have access to the whole world; today, you need a $400 phone and you can communicate directly to the entire world. This has been a tremendous source of energy to populist movements. We, the mainstream media, are weaker than we’ve ever been before, yet we are vilified for controlling the discourse. We’ve never been weaker and never been more hated."