The US President has said he supports US intelligence opinion that the Soviet country meddled in the election, just a day after during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he did not see “any reason why it would be Russia”.
Trump’s seeming siding with the Kremlin came three days after 12 Russians were indicted by US prosecutors for stealing Democratic Party documents.
Politicians from both side of US politics and former intelligence officials had condemned Mr Trump’s statement – including Mr Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.
“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy,” Mr Coats said.
Trump says what he actually said was: “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” But then added: “There’s a lot of people out there.”
There are a lot of people out there – but when your own head of intelligence says it happened, why deny it?
We think Dictionary.com’s assessment, posted the same day on Twitter, hits the nail on the head.
