Hours after his own officials including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, said the threat from Russia to U.S. elections “is real” and “is continuing,” Donald Trump lied to a rally in Pennsylvania (above) that the threat is “a hoax” and talked about his “great meeting” with Vladimir Putin, saying “we discussed everything.”
The NYT reports: ‘Mr. Wray and Mr. Coats were joined at the briefing by Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, and Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency. Officials at the briefing did not describe specific threats to the coming elections, and they were vague about how the government was responding to what they called Russia’s interference campaign. But they said Mr. Trump had directed them in a National Security Council meeting last week to aggressively confront the threats. “Our democracy itself is in the cross hairs,” Ms. Nielsen told reporters.’
