Obama: ‘I Don’t Think I Underestimated’ Putin

RUSH EXCERPT: 

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Did you underestimate Vladimir Putin?"

OBAMA: "You know, I don’t think I underestimated him, but I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating. And so part of the reason that I ordered this report was not simply to re-litigate what happened over the last several months, but rather to make sure that we understand this is something that Putin has been doing for quite some time in Europe, initially in the former satellite states where there are a lot of Russian speakers, but increasingly in Western democracies."