Klobuchar: Trump’s Undermining National Security When He Calls Russian Meddling a ‘Hoax’

CHUCK TODD: Right. Let me get you to respond to something the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, said about this election. Take a listen, Senator.

[BEGIN TAPE]

DAN COATS: Our focus here today is simply to tell the American people we acknowledge the threat. It is real. It is continuing. And we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the American people can have trust in.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD: Senator, I have to say it’s that last phrase that sort of sent a little bit of a shiver down my spine: “so that we can have a legitimate election.” It wasn’t a guarantee yet. How confident are you that the 2018 midterm elections are going to be legitimate?

SENATOR KLOBUCHAR: I am very concerned that you could have a hack that finally went through. You have 21 states that were hacked into. They didn’t find out about it for a year. And that’s one of the reasons that we want to pass our bill, so that there’s now a requirement that they tell the individual Secretary of States immediately so they can protect themselves. And I think you also have the fact that you’ve got the president undermining this on national TV. Still, after his security people, General Nakasone, that they go in front of the world, and they say this is happening, he says that night at a rally in Pennsylvania that it’s a hoax. So, that concerns me. But at the same time, there are some very good people working on it. I’d love to see this broadened out, so we start to discuss also the threats to our power grid system, the threats to our financial system, because the Russians aren’t just stopping at the election equipment.

CHUCK TODD: Is the president’s comments undermining national security when he does that?

SENATOR KLOBUCHAR: I think they do because you’ve these people that are our security people, our intelligence people. When he stood next to Vladimir Putin in front of the world and really sided with him over the intelligence people, it sent that same message to the world. So, I wish he would listen to these people. But what we have right now is a common set of facts—

CHUCK TODD: Yeah.

SENATOR KLOBUCHAR: —between at least Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and a common purpose to protect our democracy.