In tweets, Trump says Russia should be an ally, Democrats ‘embarassed’
President-elect Donald Trump officially nominated a new director of national intelligence Saturday while continuing to emphasize claims that Russian interference in last year’s presidential election did not affect the outcome.
“Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results,” Trump tweeted a day after receiving a briefing from U.S. intelligence officials. “Voting machines not touched!”
In his series of tweets Saturday morning, Trump also said: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad!” And he insisted: “When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now.”
Trump also confirmed he is nominating Dan Coats to be his director of national intelligence, saying the retired Indiana senator “has clearly demonstrated the deep subject matter expertise and sound judgment required to lead our intelligence community.”
If confirmed by his former colleagues in the Senate, Coats “will provide unwavering leadership that the entire intelligence community can respect and will spearhead my administration’s ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do us harm,” Trump said.
In accepting the nomination, Coats said that “a robust and responsible intelligence infrastructure is essential to our homeland security.”
As the Coats announcement went out, Trump tweeted about the newly released intelligence report that the Russians — including President Vladimir Putin — tried to sway the American election by hacking Democrats close to presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In one tweet, the president-elect suggested Democrats were pushing the Russia story to explain away their loss.
“Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!” Trump said.
Coats would replace current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, one of the officials who briefed the president-elect Friday afternoon.