McDonough Defends Obama’s Lack of Response on Russia: We Didn’t Want to Appear Partisan

‘We feared that if it looked like the president was involved, that this was a partisan matter, at the time we were in the middle of the campaign’

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CHUCK TODD: Let me play for you what President Obama said about this, talking what you just said. This was in December, he was recounting his conversation with Putin in September. Here it is.

[BEGIN TAPE]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly. And tell him to cut it out. And in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD: Based on the Mueller indictment of the internet research agency, we now know that that is not true. That we know the troll farms were working, particularly there were specific references to October 16th in 2016, November 3rd. At the time, the troll farms in Russia were pushing, encouraged U.S. minority groups not to vote, things like that. Were these things you missed? You didn't know they were doing this at the time? Was his comment just about the election systems?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: I think it is very important to recognize that there's two issues here, Chuck. One is the sanctity of the vote, that the voter roll, the individual going into that ballot box and casting a vote and making sure that that vote is counted. And we stand by our position that the thing we feared they may do in that spot, they did not.

CHUCK TODD: You really believe that that's what he got Putin to back off from doing?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: I believe that, we, I can tell you this. We had great fear that that was what they had in mind during the course of the summer of 2016. We had great fear that we needed to take significant steps to stop them from doing it. A direct confrontation with President Putin when they were both in China, we went to the bipartisan leadership of Congress to ask them to work with us to ensure that the states had what they needed. And by the way, Chuck, the lack of urgency that we saw from the Republican leadership in 2016, we continue to see to this day today. It's beyond time for Congress to work with the administration, to work with the states, to ensure that our electoral systems are ready to go. This is not a game.

CHUCK TODD: I want to know though, why did Director of National Intelligence Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson go out by themselves?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: For two reasons.

CHUCK TODD: Why didn’t--

DENIS MCDONOUGH: For two reasons.

CHUCK TODD: Why wasn’t -- Why wasn't it the president flanked by his director of National Intelligence? That would've elevated this to a level that the public might have taken even more seriously.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: For two reasons, Chuck. And I can come back to whether the public actually had an opportunity through the reporting to understand exactly what was happening. But for two reasons. One, you know how we run our elections and our electoral infrastructure. It's by state and local officials who are partisans, Republicans and Democrats. We feared that if it looked like the president was involved, that this was a partisan matter, at the time we were in the middle of the campaign. The president had a view in the campaign. And we wanted to make sure that partisan politics did not color state officials' reaction to the information. Point one. Point two is, we also knew that the Russians wanted to undercut confidence in our electoral system. We did not want to play into their hands. And in fact, we didn't. And as a result, we had 33 states work with the Department of Homeland Security to scan and strengthen their systems. That ends up being very important to the outcome of the election.

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