The day after the FBI offered a detailed overview about Russian interference in the U.S. election, Donald Trump started really talking about hacking. Of course, he didn’t say anything particularly coherent about this very technical issue. That would be out of character for someone who recently stood by a flag-waving Don King and mumbled about the “age of computer.” Yet Trump is now claiming to know a lot about hacking, as he explained outside his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate to reporters on New Year’s Eve.
The New York Times has a transcript of Trump’s odd words to the press. He moved towards some sort of acknowledgement that hacking happened, but he wants to cast doubt on Russia as a responsible party. Of course, he’s still forgetting that he publicly asked Russia to hack, yet he’s concerned about pointing fingers at specific foreign powers:
“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge. If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong. So I want them to be sure. I think it’s unfair if they don’t know … I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”
Trump then stressed how no one can trust email, and he has a tip to avoid hackers. “It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” he said. Trump then promised to reveal more about what he knows “on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
The president-elect is expected to receive an intelligence briefing early in the year. Hopefully, that’s not what he’s referring to with a promise to reveal more, but it’s hard to tell what he means. After all, this is still the same guy who asked everyone to forget about hacking last week.
(Via New York Times)