Trump on Putin, Hillary and hacking…
PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic Party during last year’s election, but denied that the leaks were intended to boost him and argued that Moscow would cease cyber attacks on the US once he is sworn in.
In a rollicking hour-long news conference, Trump furiously denounced as “fake news” reports that Russia had obtained salacious intelligence that could compromise him. He suggested that any damaging information collected by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration would already have been released – and he celebrated what had been leaked about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“As for hacking, I think it was Russia,” Trump said. “Hacking’s bad and it shouldn’t be done. But look at the things that were hacked, look at what was learnt.”
Allowing his hostility and contempt toward the US intelligence community to again burst into public view, Trump also reaffirmed his belief – first expressed in a tweet earlier on Wednesday morning – that intelligence officials were behaving as though they were in “Nazi Germany” with what he termed “disgraceful” leaks to the media. The Anti-Defamation League asked Trump to apologise for trivialising the Holocaust.
At the press conference, Trump made a series of promises but provided little specific evidence on how he would deliver them. He vowed to repeal and replace President Obama’s Affordable Care Act quickly; and nearly simultaneously (“could be in the same hour”) to start building a wall along the US border with Mexico before persuading the Mexican government to pay for it (“that will happen, whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a payment”); and unveiled how he is disentangling himself from the management of his business empire while still refusing to divest himself of his financial interests. He also said he would continue to refuse to release his tax returns.
In a performance that was, by turns, considered, combative and carnivalesque, Trump also definitively confirmed that winning the presidency has not changed his public presentation to that of a more traditional statesman.
Instead, he repeatedly lashed out at the media. He hushed up correspondents from CNN – “You are fake news,” he hissed at them – which broke the news that Trump and Obama had been briefed on allegations that Russian intelligence services have compromising material on Trump’s personal life and finances.
Yet he insisted the warm relationship he had cultivated with Putin was beneficial:. “If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability. Now, I don’t know that I’m gonna get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do … And if I don’t, do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me?”