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 m
saturday night. brian: you should charge your phone because it s there. ainsley: let s talk about the election meddling that was the big story at the end of the week last week. 13 russians tried to interfere with the election in 2016 while president obama was in office. so, our current president, president trump is asking why didn t he take action? steve: he tweeted this out yesterday, president trump did. obama was president up to and beyond the 2016 election. so why didn t he do something about russian meddling? well, you know what, mr. president, that s a great point, because we know, historically, that president obama told reporters after the election that he had told putin in september, before the election, i know what you re doing, knock it off. and, yet, when this narrative goes forward about the russians were involved and the obama administration knew about it, the president knew about it when he said this about three weeks before the election. there is no serious person out
obama defended the administration s strategy to keep the information quiet. as we were deliberating this, we thought the more we play this up in public, the more we play their game. we create further doubt by making this into a big public matter. but a former senior obama official felt differently telling the post it is the hardest thing about my time in government to defend. i feel like we sort of choked. president obama reportedly issued a stern warning to putin in september. and the post details obama s authorization to plant cyber weapons, so-called digital bombs in russia s infrastructure that could be used to retaliate. but obama left office before the planning was complete. lawmakers are questioning why more wasn t done to stop the russians or alert americans. i greatly admire president obama. i wish he and the administration would have acted differently here. what s important now is we know what they did. when it comes to the russia probe, today is the deadline for
the question? well, i don t know. i think they ll keep doing it until there s some way to stop it. and you know, the comments you mean they ll keep the hacking? of course. specifically with the dems? with everybody. they ll do this in future elections. they ll keep doing this. they ll keep but what do you think is their motivation? just to what is putin s motivation? to mess with us, to show that he can do it. he does because he s showing that he can do it and that we re too weak to stop it and that our policies against russia have been ineffective. so, they still hold crimea, they still threaten the baltics, they still buzz our warships with their fighter jets, which is basically kicking sand in our face. sure. and they re going to keep doing it until they re stopped. and i think it s going to take more than the words that president obama said to putin in september at the g-20. it s going to take little more than that, i think, to bring this to a stop. ef
that claim is false. the administration publicly accused russia of hacking in early october a month before the election. and privately obama met with putin in september reporting him to stop hacking or face consequences. this is increasing friction with the administrations. josh earnest insisted it was obvious trump knew russia was meddling in the election. just a fact. you have it on tape. the republican nominee for president was encouraging russia to hack his opponent because he believed it would help him campaign. i recognize the defense from the trump campaign he was joking. i don t think anybody at the white house thinks it s funny. last night, trump lashed back at the white house spokesman