independent advice. president trump doesn t like independent advice. he wants people to do what he says. and that s what we ve seen out of john bolton. i will say, anderson, this lends urgency to a piece of legislation that senator rubio and i have introduced called the deter act, which would establish automatic, very severe sanctions on russia if they get caught interfering in our 2018 elections or any future elections. it has bipartisan support, and since the president s not willing to defend our democracy, it s really incumbent upon the united states senate to move on that legislation right now. you know, senator, let me ask you then on that point, there haven t really been, as far as i understand, cabinet level meetings headed by the president of the united states about the interference, about what happened, and about how to prevent it. we have heard from chris wray and others testifying on capitol hill that efforts individual agencies have done to try to combat ongoing cyberatta
communications where you have russian officials discussing this and their intentions in doing this. in addition to that, they match those electronic fingerprints with previous attacks that they know that russia carried out. for instance, one reason the u.s. intelligence community is confident that these groups like the gru, russian military intelligence, interfered in 2016 is that the same groups hacked the white house and state department e-mail systems prior to the election so they can compare their m.o., as it were, to then make that assessment. so the idea that and you even saw darrell issa there to say, well, it s right to raise questions about this assessment. it s a remarkable thing for american officials and lawmakers to do in light of the depth of the evidence behind that assessment. before we go to shimmon, we re showing on the screen the president said all i can do is ask the question whether russia meddled. that s just such a ridiculous statement. that s all he can do i
complimenting him left and right and flat-out refusing to hit a softball frankly from an american reporter saying this is bad. also, dana, for vladimir putin, who studies a lot and has reads a lot and has studied u.s. politics clearly and not only that meddled in u.s. politics but studied donald trump very clearly, to hear i just can t imagine being vladimir putin and actually hearing the president of the united states go back to the well of hillary clinton s server and the 30,000 e-mails and all this stuff, which he s been like rainman going back to time and time again for years now. but to hear him on the world stage doing that standing next to vladimir putin, i mean with all the research putin has done, it s got to have been a surreal moment for vladimir putin to actually hear him return to something he has just it s
jim sciutto and shimon prokupez. jim sciutto, i saw some of your tweets about what was not said, what was said, what stands out? listen, the threat of russian interference is not only still a threat, it s happening right now. everybody has been briefed on the intelligence. you speak to folks on the hill and this would include the president. he knows this because his intelligence briefers would have let him know that there is evidence of not only continuing russian involvement in social media, divisive issues here in the u.s., but also probing attacks on actual voting syst s systems, which russia did in 2016 as well although it did not act on those attacks and interfere with the actual voting process in 2016, but it s continuing probing attacks on things like voter registration rolls, et cetera, to set up that possibility. that is the great concern of intelligence officials today. so for the president to stand there next to the russian president, who it is believed
asked do you feel that that why relations are bad? and he said definitively, no, that s not why. it s because of russia s bad behavior. but after this as he s traveling with the president, he chooses to have absolutely no reaction. nothing to say. nothing from the state department. i think it s also striking that hillary clinton that probably without knowing it had almost a p prebu prebuttal for this when she tweeted yesterday, president trump, do you know whose team you re playing for? today president trump himself did not seem to know the answer to that question. yeah, they re certainly sharing the ball and they did on that stage. let s go to manu raju for congressional reaction as we continue to monitor what, if anything, republicans are saying from capitol hill. manu? reporter: we haven t heard a whole lot from republicans yet, anderson. one reason why is because this is monday and members are just starting to trickle in. we ve heard some members on