Trump mocks CIA assessment that Russia tried to help him win
An unprecedented rift.
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Budget 25
In an unprecedented public put-down, US president-elect Donald Trump has mocked a CIA assessment that Russia tried to help him win the election.
The assessment was secret but leaked to the Washington Post, which reported:
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
The agency did not detail any evidence that Russia had managed to directly manipulate the result, which saw Hillary Clinton easily win the popular vote (65.5 million to 62.8 million) but narrowly miss out on winning key "rust belt" swing states by just tens of thousand of votes — costing her the Electoral College and the White House.
Saturday New Zealand time, Mr Trump released a statement saying "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." He added that the election was over and that it was time to “move on.”
It's not usual for an incoming president to comment on an intelligence agency, let alone create a public rift.
The New York Times tartly notes that Mr Trump has only "sporadically" attended intelligence briefings.
And that he must now also deal with a number of Republicans who do want the behaviour of American's Cold War foe investigated.
The Times quotes Congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and was considered by Mr Trump for secretary of Homeland Security, saying, “We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy. When they do, we must respond forcefully, publicly and decisively.”
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Trump mocks CIA assessment that Russia tried to help him win
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