Priebus: The Russians Didn't Force Hillary Clinton
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RNC Chair and incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus debates ABC's 'This Week' host George Stephanopolous about a report published this weekend in the Washington Post citing anonymous CIA sources who claim that there is evidence the Russians intentionally interfered with the some aspect of the 2016 election in order to boost the Trump campaign.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, this comes on the heels of another report from the intelligence community -- all 17 intelligence agencies did come to an agreement that Russia was trying to influence the elections, without describing a motive. When I spoke to President-Elect Trump about that back in October, he said he hadn’t gotten a briefing.
Has he been briefed now on those findings?
PRIEBUS: I -- listen, I’m not -- by the way, George, as you know from working in the White House, it takes a long time -- I’m not the president, so the president, you know, has top secret clearance immediately. I don’t. It takes time. So I’m not in those top secret meetings, nor would it be appropriate. The president can’t tell me what’s ha -- what’s being said in a top secret meeting unless I have top secret clearance. I’ll eventually be in those meetings.
But, look, the Russians didn’t tell Hillary Clinton to ignore Wisconsin and Michigan, OK? I mean, I know it’s -- this is an insane analysis. She lost the election because her ideas were bad. She didn’t fit the electorate. She ignored states that she shouldn’t have and Donald Trump was the change agent, OK? So this is all very interesting, but Donald Trump won in an electoral landslide that had nothing to do with the Russians. Or whoever else.