obama administration was told way before the 2016 election that the russians were meddling, why no action? focus on them, not t. t for trump. ryan nobles with the president s tactic for claims of russian meddling. reporter: good morning. president trump spent a lot of time during the campaign and after his election attempting to downplay russia s role interv e intervening in the 2016 election. after the report in the washington post that details the obama administration s response that the intelligence community s assessment, he seems willing to admit russia s efforts as long as he can blame president obama for not doing enough. one former administration official concedes in the report that they could have and perhaps should have done more. on state of the union, adam schiff, a democrat and ranking member on the intelligence three, agreed. the american people needed to know. i didn t think it was enough to tell them after the election. rather, given the seriousness of
was told way before 2016 election that the russians were meddling, why no action? focus on them, not t. talk to me about what you think is going through the president s mind. why is he not getting in front of a podium and maybe taking a stand on this finally? i think it s probably easier and a little bit less embarrassing to tweet something than stand in front of a podium. we haven t seen him do too much of that recently. you know, these investigations are clearly progressing. they had the open of, you know, testimony last week from jeh johnson, former homeland security secretary. you see republicans talking about, well, why wasn t more done during the obama administration. then the blockbuster washington post report about how one obama administration person told the post that they choked essentially on russia. this is a line of inquiry we ll see more of from republicans. and president trump in particular is probably
coverage. however, the congressional budget office estimate of the house bill found that 14 million americans will. we still need to see how the senate version will fare in the cbo s eyes. we ll find out when the cbo releases its analysis this week. maybe today. hope so. looks like president trump has a new strategy to deal with claims of russian interference in the 2016 election. he s placing that blame squarely on former president obama. president trump escalating his attacks on mr. obama over the weekend, seizing on a stunning washington post report that quotes a former senior obama administration official. that unnamed official telling the post, we sort of choked on blocking russia s efforts to influence the u.s. election. president trump tweeting over the weekend saying since the obama administration was told way before the 2016 election that the russians were meddling, why no action? focus on them, not t. for trump. cnn s ryan nobles has more on
far in advance of november 8th about election meddling by russia. did nothing about it. then writing in all capital letters, why? then he wrote, since the obama administration was told well before the 2016 election that the russians were meddling, why no action? focus on them, not t. i just heard today for the first time that obama knew about russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it. nobody wants to talk about that. the cia gave him information on russia a long time before they even, you know before the election, and i hardly see it. it s an amazing thing to me. in other words, the question is if he had the information, why didn t he do something about it? he should have done something about it. but you don t read that. it s quite sad.
election that the russians were meddling, why no action, focus on them, not t. in another tweet, obama official said they choked when it came to handling russian meddling in election. they didn t want to hurt hillary. you got the sense. nbc s kelly o donnell at the white house. you and i understand the tweets we were eluding to here. when we think about the russia situation, what is the perspective from the white house right now? because we are getting that shift to, it seems, an acknowledgment that, yes, it did happen. we didn t have that on thursday. reporter: the president is sort of embracing the idea in subtle ways through tweets saying that there was russian meddling. that moved the ball a bit. previously he d been saying other countries could be responsible for it, as well, and even sort of a hacker in a basement kind of thing. he has moved in the way he s