Fox News anchor Shep Smith ridiculed President Trump on Friday for doubting Russian election interference.
He expressed his bewilderment to fellow Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who offered his take on why the president doubts its ongoing occurrence.
Trump, when asked by reporters Thursday whether or not he discussed election interference during his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded, “You don’t really believe this, do you believe this?”
“It’s one of the more baffling things of a baffling presidency,” Smith began. “There is no doubt that they are interfering, and yet, he goes, ‘Do you believe that?’ Yes, I believe it. I believe everyone in your government. I believe everyone in an intelligence apparatus. Of course I believe it. Is he the only one who doesn’t believe it or is he making it up?”
“I think he views any statement like that, in effect, as a statement you didn’t get legitimately elected and somehow, it discredits his victory in 2016,” Wallace responded. “So, I think his initial reflex reaction is to push back on that. In fact, the government has done some things to try to secure our 2020 election from Russian interference, and I think when Donald Trump is presented with that, his initial instinct is not that you are saying Russia interfered, you are saying he didn’t win the election fair and square.”
“Nobody said that but to deny that there is interference, it seems like if you’re president, you’d want to unite the country around the idea that we are under attack,” Smith countered. “That’s what his intelligence agencies tell us.”
A U.S. intelligence community report released in January 2017 stated with “high confidence” the Russian government relayed stolen information to WikiLeaks and the Kremlin worked to tilt the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, told Congress last month that Russia is still trying to interfere in U.S. elections.
