On Wednesday evening, Americans are supposed to get their first impression of Clinton’s running mate, US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, at the Democratic National Convention. America doesn’t know him now and might not know him tomorrow either.

The fact that Hillary Clinton shattered a massive glass ceiling Tuesday by becoming the first woman nominated by a major party for president in national history, potentially inspiring a generation of young women to chase their dreams. That really was something, wasn’t it? Yesterday.

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump has done it again. He’s taken over the news cycle.

Hours from now, President Obama will pass the torch of Democratic Party leadership to the woman he hopes will succeed him. What’s more, Obama’s speech is exactly 12 years after his famous convention address in Boston that sparked the presidential buzz around him.


But did you see what Trump just said?

At a press conference Wednesday morning in Florida, Trump told Russia to release Hillary Clinton’s deleted 30,000 e-mails if it has them.

“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 e-mails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Trump’s comments come just a few days after Wikileaks published around 20,000 e-mails among DNC staff. The messages appear to show bias among DNC staffers for Clinton over US Senator Bernie Sanders in the recently concluded Democratic presidential primary.

US government officials and top Clinton aides have suggested Russians hackers were behind the leak. There’s also been speculation that the Wikileaks e-mail dump was a way for Russia to meddle with an American election — and to tip the scales in favor of Trump.


Clinton’s campaign might hope to ignore Trump’s comment to keep the focus on the convention, but it was compelled to respond.

“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts,” said Clinton campaign senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan. “This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”

It’s unclear whether Trump intentionally stole the news cycle from Clinton. He frequently speaks off the cuff at press conferences like the one he hosted on Wednesday. He’ll likely answer more questions about it tonight when he does a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) chat session.

Regardless, this is the not first time Trump has stolen a spotlight.

Ahead of the South Carolina primary, US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida hoped to jump-start his flailing presidential campaign by announcing the governor’s endorsement. That was the same day Trump found himself in a feud with, of all people, the pope.

What Rubio endorsement?

On Wednesday, instead of an afternoon of cable news chatter on Democratic Party unity and history making, the news cycle will serve as a reminder that Clinton used a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state and that Russia may have hacked it. Also: No investigation has ever publicly acknowledged any evidence that Russians successfully hacked Clinton’s server.


But for today, at least, such details do not matter to the Clinton campaign officials, because they aren’t getting the story they wished for.

James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jamespindell or subscribe to his daily e-mail update on the 2016 campaign at www.bostonglobe.com/groundgame.