VIDEO - ‘How Do You Know It’s False!?’: Smerconish, RNC Spox Collide Over Reported Russian Election Interference | Mediaite
CNN’s Michael Smerconish spoke with Sean Spicer of the Republican National Committee today, and the conversation became a fiery shouting match over the CIA’s reported conclusion that Russian hackers meddled with the election.
Last night, Washington Post released a bombshell report suggesting that senior CIA officials have determined that Russia committed cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton‘s top aides in order to damage her presidential chances. The New York Times corroborated this report with one of their own, stating that Russians also hacked the RNC’s networks, but decided to not release their findings in order to help Donald Trump win.
When Smerconish asked the RNC’s Communications Director about this, Spicer argued that WaPo’s report did not contain a formal assessment, and the Times was wrong because their piece ignored evidence provided by the RNC which suggests they weren’t hacked. Smerconish reminded Spicer that people are going to their partisan corners on this issue, attacking each other over the election instead of uniting over concerns about whether foreign entities were at work here.
As Spicer continued to question the truth of the Times’ report, Smerconish pressed him further by asking “how do you know it’s false?” Spicer emphatically denied again that the RNC was hacked like the DNC was, and eventually, Smerconish grilled him over the implications over Trump’s dismissal of the CIA’s findings.
“I’m also troubled by the idea that my president-elect he’s going to be all of our president, is already throwing under the bus the intelligence community with whom he’s going to have to work on life and death matters…Why aren’t we, as Americans, upset about the fact that a foreign hostile actor apparently put its thumb on the scale in our election, and why doesn’t Donald Trump want to get to the bottom of that as he takes office?”
You can watch Spicer and Smeroconish’s heated debate on that topic above, via CNN.
Watch above, via CNN.
[Image via screengrab]
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