Donald Trump has attacked the credibility of the CIA, rejecting as “ridiculous” a report from the intelligence agency that said Russia had intervened in the presidential election to help the billionaire businessman win.
The president-elect called the CIA’s findings, which rocked Washington over the weekend, “just another excuse” for Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss. “I don’t believe it,” he told Fox News yesterday.
The interview aired shortly after a bipartisan Senate quartet said the CIA report “should alarm every American” and called for a congressional investigation into the Russian accusations.
Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Democratic senators Jack Reed and Chuck Schumer, said the probe “cannot be a partisan issue”.
President Barack Obama has already ordered a full intelligence review of Russia’s election meddling before Mr Trump is inaugurated.
Congressional unease over Mr Trump’s warmth towards Russia was exacerbated by indications that Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s chief executive, is the leading candidate to be named US secretary of state. Mr McCain said that he had concerns about Mr Tillerson’s “close personal relationship” with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who awarded the oil man the Kremlin’s Order of Friendship in 2013. The Exxon chief opposed Russian sanctions the following year.
Mr McCain’s doubts were echoed by Republican senator Marco Rubio, who tweeted: “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a #SecretaryofState.”
In the Fox interview, Mr Trump said he was close to identifying his choice for the top US diplomat and praised Mr Tillerson as a “world-class player”. But he had positive words for Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, and Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, in a sign the final decision may not yet have been made.
With 40 days to go before he is sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the former reality television star also deflected qualms over his continuing business interests, telling Fox he had turned down seven deals just last week.
He also defended his decision to abandon the longstanding practice of receiving a daily intelligence briefing. “I’m a smart person. I don’t need to be told the same thing every day,” he said. “If something should change, let me know.”
Mr Trump also cast doubt on the “one-China” policy that Washington has observed since 1972. “I don’t know why we have to be bound by the one-China policy unless we make a deal with China on other things,” he said, citing its military build-up in the South China Sea.
Challenged on whether his campaign pledge of a 35 per cent tax on goods produced by US companies that move abroad violated Republican economic views, he said: “That’s not the free market. That’s the dumb market.”
