Donald Trump hedges on Russia hacking while in Poland: "A lot of countries interfere"

In a press conference Thursday, Donald Trump wouldn't say that Russia was solely responsible for its actions

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published July 6, 2017 7:38AM (EDT)

 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump is still angrier at CNN than he is at Russia. And he still won't admit what security agencies say — that Russia played a big role in hacking Democratic servers in order to influence the 2016 election.

"Well, I think it was Russia and I think it could have been other people in other countries," Trump said in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday. "I won't be specific, but I think a lot of people interfere."

Trump, who was meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, also once again shifted the blame to former President Barack Obama.

"Now the thing I have to mention is that Barack Obama, when he was president, found out about this, in terms of if it were Russia. Found out about it in August," Trump said. "Now the election was in November. That's a lot of time. He did nothing about it. Why did he do nothing about it?"

Summarizing the criticisms that Obama "choked," Trump speculated that instead Obama was overly-confident that Hillary Clinton would win the election "and he said let's not do anything about it. Had he thought the other way, he would have done something about it."

Trump also criticized North Korea during his trip to Poland, telling reporters, "It's a shame they're behaving this way — they're behaving in a very, very dangerous manner and something will have to be done about it."

He also criticized CNN, saying that the network's coverage of his controversial retweeted meme disparaging the network had "really hurt themselves. Very badly. Very, very badly."

He added, "We don't want fake news. Bad thing for our country. Very bad for our country."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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