Trump said, without offering evidence, that the news he had been briefed on the memo “was released by maybe the (US) intelligence agencies”.
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Buzzfeed has a young audience and often publishes journalism associated with the political Left, unlike Trump whose most stable constituency is older voters on the Right.
And the president-elect, who has scheduled his first news conference Wednesday, did not immediately comment on the revelations.
“Your organization is bad!”
DONALD TRUMP: Don’t be rude. “And I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today”. Trump responded quickly, on Twitter as usual, calling the journalists liars and comparing the behavior of the spy agencies to the leaders of Nazi Germany. “I think it was Russian Federation”, he said when asked during the press conference.
Business Insider goes as far as to say when asking yourself whether or not Buzzfeed should have published the Trump-Russia dossier, you have to ask yourself what would have happened if the dossier hadn’t been published?
CNN said the news organization’s “decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different than Buzzfeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos”.
“We still don’t know what data is really being used by those who present such unfounded accusations”, Peskov said this morning.
McFadden said that none of the investigations conducted by United States intelligence agencies found any conclusive link between Trump and the Russian government. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC.
They included factual errors, as well as allegations that Russian Federation was aware of “sexual perversion” engaged in by Mr Trump during a visit to Moscow.
“If Putin likes Donald Trump I consider that an asset, not a liability because we have a disgusting relationship with Russian Federation”, he said.
News of the warrant, compounded with the fact Trump was about to hold his first press conference in almost six months, may help explain why the reports finally came out now.
Later, he added, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I could wait a year and a half to start negotiations with Mexico, but I don’t want to wait”, Trump said.
For months now, Mr Trump has been at loggerheads with the intelligence community after he repeatedly ridiculed their findings that Russian Federation hacked the 2016 election in favour of the now President-elect. One issue that the report talked about was the relationship of three individuals associated with the campaign. The New York Times reported the operative had previously worked for British intelligence. Indeed, Trump has previously announced press conferences that either never materialized or wound up being extended campaign events at which no actual questions from the media were taken.
Shaub noted that the arrangement Trump unveiled at a Wednesday press conference should not be compared to a blind trust, which is overseen by an independent trustee who works to sell off assets and reduce conflicts.
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“It’s frankly outrageous and highly irresponsible for a left-wing blog that was openly hostile to the president-elect’s campaign to drop highly salacious and flat out false information on the internet just days before he takes the oath of office”, press secretary Sean Spicer said at the outset of the conference.
