Rare Contributor
In one tweet, President Donald Trump simultaneously admitted that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election — something he, at one time, vigorously denied — and accused former President Barack Obama of knowing about the meddling and refusing to do anything about it.
Videos by Rare
On Friday night, President Trump took to his favorite communication medium, Twitter, to lash out at his predecessor for refusing to do anything about Russia meddling in the United States presidential election, writing, “Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/878413313188802560
The tweet is a surprising development from Trump considering that he has denied that Russia tried to influence the election. Earlier this year, he accused Democrats of making up the story to cover up a “terrible” campaign and calling it “fake news.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843776582825267201
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832238070460186625
Trump’s Friday tweet came after a Fox News interview where he also accused the former president of knowing about the interference and refusing to act on it.
“I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it,” Trump said in a clip for the upcoming interview, which will air in full on Sunday. “But nobody wants to talk about that.”
He added: “The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before they even—before the election. And I hardly see it. It’s an amazing thing. To me, in other words, the question is, if he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it.”
On Friday, The Washington Post revealed that the CIA had concluded in August 2016 that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to interfere in the election to boost Trump’s chances of winning and to “defeat” or “damage” Hillary Clinton’s ability to win.
The CIA’s information prompted Obama to secretly authorize intelligence community members to plant cyber weapons in Russian infrastructure, but the method, along with a series of other countermeasures, was not approved until December – more than a month after the election was over.
Obama did deliver a series of warnings to Putin, which those closest to Obama believe helped stop the Russians from meddling further in the election, such as sabotaging the United States voting system.
President Trump received an intelligence briefing in January, informing him of the Russian election interference, but he continued to deny their involvement for months afterward.
[protected-iframe id=”7e4239846a8e17e237e0937a7fb29f42-46934866-40689585″ info=”https://rumble.com/embed/u76hf.vf2zg/” width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ class=”rumble” allowfullscreen=””]
