In his first comments since news broke of an ongoing cyber attack on the United States believed to be unprecedented in scale, and which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said is likely the work of Russia, US President Donald Trump has tried to downplay Moscow’s role.
“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)” Trump tweeted.
“There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA,” he added.
Pompeo had earlier told radio host Mark Levin that “we can see pretty clearly that it was the Russians” who conducted the attack. The attack, which exploited a vulnerability in software made by SolarWinds and which was in use by several US government agencies as well as top Fortune 500 companies, is believed to have infected systems ranging from the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency to Microsoft and even the US Treasury.
Trump has a precedent of downplaying Russian interference in US affairs: When prompted to comment on Russian interference in the 2016 US election, Trump in 2018 contradicted what his own intelligence agencies had reported, reiterating that Russia had never interfered in the election while at a face-to-face talk with President Vladimir Putin.
Since the US election results became evident in November, Trump has continuously challenged the outcome of the vote, despite his legal challenges being shut down by the Supreme Court.