Trump: Only ‘fools’ see good relations with Russia as bad

Bloomberg

Facing calls to strike back at Russia for what US intelligence agencies have termed Moscow’s interference with the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Donald Trump instead suggested warmer relations between the two countries.
The president-elect took to Twitter on Saturday to discuss the potential US-Russia relationship under his administration, a day after US spy chiefs briefed him on the Russian measures they said were directed by President Vladimir Putin. “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump said in a series of three tweets. “Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one.”
“When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now,” Trump assured his 19 million Twitter followers. On Friday, top US intelligence officials met with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York to present evidence that Putin personally ordered cyber and disinformation attacks on the US campaign.
Putin developed “a clear preference” for Trump to win, the agencies said in a declassified summary of their findings. The agencies said they “assess Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” according to the report.

‘High Confidence’
“All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence,” the report said. “Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.”
Requests for comment on Friday to the Russian Embassy in Washington were not returned. On Saturday, posts from the Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in the UK dismissed the report, calling it “a pathetic attempt at tainting Americans’ vote by innuendo couched in Intel new-speak.”
“All accusations against Russia are based on ‘confidence’ and assumptions,” Alexey Pushkov, a member of the Russian Parliament’s upper house, said on Twitter. As Trump’s transition team did in a statement in December, Pushkov drew a parallel with the US intelligence finding of the early 2000s that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The report was released shortly after intelligence chiefs briefed Trump on their findings that Russia was responsible for the hacking of Democratic Party computers and the leaking of e-mails damaging to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations.

‘Poorly Defended’
Trump said negligence by the DNC had allowed the hacking to go ahead. “Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!” Trump tweeted on Saturday. By contrast, “the Republican National Committee had strong defense!” he said—although the intelligence report said that Russia had targeted both major parties.
In a statement after Friday’s meeting, the president-elect didn’t explicitly endorse the intelligence officials’ conclusions, but said he has “tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.”
“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,” Trump said in the statement.
The intelligence agencies agreed there was no evidence of ballots being hacked but said in the report that, “we did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.”