confronting president putin, us going to congress to press them to work with us to make sure that the states were doing everything they could to protect the sanctity of every americans' vote, and then ultimately, releasing a very powerful statement from the secretary of homeland security and the director of national intelligence calling attention to this threat. so we did exactly what we think we needed to do. and, in fact, that discussion between president obama and president putin, we believe, was very impactful on the russian actions. some of the things that we feared they may do, they did not do. >> let me play for you what president obama said about -- talking what you just said, this was in december he was recounting his conversation with putin in september. here it is. >> i felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out. and, in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process. >> based on the mueller