The election. As soon as he gets to the podium, we will take you there. President trump is now responding to stunning details from a Washington Post report about president obamas efforts to stop russian meddling in the 2016 election. Last night, he tweeted out, just out, the Obama Administration knew far in advance of november 8th about election meddling by russia. Did nothing about it. Why . The Washington Post reveals that obama knew russian president Vladimir Putin was directly involved. It also chronicles the super secretive and strained play by play of what the Obama Administration did do in response to the meddling, mostly through sanctions that even Obama Administration officials admit were mostly symbolic. Lets get more on this from cnn washington correspondent ryan nobles. Hes joining us live from the white house. Ryan, lets backtrack for a second because just this week, the president called claims of russian meddling a democratic hoax. But it seems like he just acknowledged that it actually did happen. What do you think . Yeah, boris, when given the opportunity to pin russias intervention in the u. S. Election on the previous administration, it seems as though the president has no problem saying that russia was involved, but of course his past statements, hes been back and forth about just how important russias intervention was during the u. S. Election and even blamed it on other countries perhaps china, even going as far to say it could have been done by one man, a 400pound man sitting at his bed. But, yes, youre right. He is specifically pointing to parts of this report where even past Administration Officials describe what happened with the Obama Administration as the administration sort of choking and he said that in a tweet as you mentioned, but he also talked about it in an interview with fox news thats scheduled to air tomorrow. Take a listen. Well, i just heard today for the first time that obama knew about russia a long time before the election and he did nothing about it, but nobody wants to talk about that. The cia gave him information on russia a long time before they even before the election, and i hardly see it. Its an maizing thing to me. In order, the question is if he had the information, why didnt he do something about it . He should have dope something about it. As you pointed out, the Obama Administration did do something about it. But they didnt do everything at their disposal at the time. Theres reasons for that. Tay argue it happened too late, they didnt find out about it until august, but president obama did personally confront Vladimir Putin during a meeting of the g20 back in september and he was also very concerned about the political ramifications at the time. He thought that if he intervened too heavily that would make it look as though he was attempting to help Hillary Clintons campaign. Boris, a lot of this 20 20 hindsight but to your original point, a much different view from the white house has to the role russia played than weve heard previously. Ryan nobles, thank you. Lets get political with our panel. Mike shields, former chief of staff to reince priebus, jose, the former Deputy Press Secretary for the Democratic National committee, and joining us again today from moscow, jill doherty, former cnn Moscow Bureau chief. Mike, we have to ask, which is it . Does the president believe the hack was a hoax or did it actually happen . Your thoughts. I think what has happened in american politics is the russians clearly were trying to interfere if in our elections. We have congressional investigations going into that. But because of partisan politics, the left, the democrats and a lot of people in media have become obsessed with how do we hang this on the president , try and find some collusion with his campaign and take our eye off the ball of what we should be talking about, which is what the russians did. Its turned into this huge political football, which by the way theres been scores of investigators looking for it and absolutely zero evidence of anything has turned up that there was any collusion, but that is the sort of way democrats want to use this to explain how Hillary Clinton lost as opposed to focusing on a foreign state trying to med until our elections and focus on the real investigation of what was done by the government, who knew in the government about it, why wasnt something addressed. So perhaps now we can get back to that and stop focusing so much on this being a partisan attack on the president to try and tie his campaign to smething when theres literally been zero evidence of any wrong doing there. Even outside of the question of collusion, theres still a question of whether or not the president actually believes that russia meddled in the election. Up until last night, it was murky. There was no clear indication. He himself called it a hoax and partly created that political football, dont you think . I think hes responding to the partisan attacks and so some of his language is going to bend towards this whole thing is baloney meaning his campaign colluding or this somehow affecting his administration is ballooning. I think the republicans on capitol hill and democrats working together to investigate the russians meddling in the election itself, and i think thats where the focus needs to be. The president s talking more about the idea that somehow this can be blamed on him or his campaign opera tichs when theres been no evidence of that, and we need to get back to focusing on this being a foreign state trying to meddling in our elections and what the u. S. Government at the time knew about it. Jose to you, it appears the president is blaming the Obama Administration for not having done more. One Administration Official is quoted in that article as saying we choked, they dropped the ball and didnt do enough to get back at Vladimir Putin for orchestrating this meddling. Do you think the Obama Administration choked . Look, i think we have to be fair here and the former administration. They didnt have all the answers, all the information, and like you reported it was too late. I think part of this whole thing, we have to be careful. It can undermine our democracy. We have to be to get to the bottom of the investigation. Its taking over washington and the country, scandal after scandal. The president of the United States, donald trump, is on sesed with this investigation, which is why you see him tweeting day after day auking about it. My question to the president is simple. Did the russians interfere . Yes or no. First he blamed it on the democrats, it was a witchhuntnow hes blaming it on the former president. Which is it . I have the utmost respect for the special counsel. They have an outstanding team. We need to get to the bottom of this so we can continue looking for solutions that the American People are demanding, creating jobs, driving our economy upwards and so forth. To be fair, jose, there are Administration Officials that have said we didnt know the full scope of this thing, but they had reviewed several options to get back at russia going back to the fall of last year, sanctions that could have, quote, cratered the russian economy. So why didnt they carry those thins out . Look, i mean, again, i think president obama and hi administration, they did everything they could at the time. Its a very sensitive topic. They cant just act without having all the information, which is why the investigation is ongoing. We dont have all the answers. We know so many people have testified and there are so many people that are going to continue to testify so we look for these answers. This isnt going to go anywhere, boris. I think we have a long way before we get to a solution. To be clear, there was a report put out october 7th from several intelligence agencies, essentially outlining russian meddling in the election. Jill, a really unsettling aspect of this reporting is just how expansive, how orchestrated the russians were. How long do you think they were planning this . Have you gotten any indication . I think for a very long time. If you look at the way the administration at the time was looking at this, they thought that in the beginning that this was just kind of the usual intelligence that russia collects about everything. And there was a big election coming up. And so you began in the beginning they were thinking its just information collecting, spying activity, et cetera, kind of the normal thing. Then you see more and more. Hacking into emails, emails spread by wikileaks. Then you see a greater pattern. Then you see as was in the Washington Post story, more and more russian officials trying to get visas to the United States and those officials have technical background, which was also a bit suspicious. Then you have more information that begins to point directly to Vladimir Putin as the person who instigated this. I think it was incremental in the beginning. But the significance of how big it is i think is really great that they were using everything, they were using hacking, they were using fake news, they were using bots, they were using social media, they were using a lot of Different Things to influence what was going on in the United States. And i think this debate, you know, about there is no proof, there is no proof yet. Thats what these investigations are for. So to say that collusion is not proven, yes. At this point, it is not proven. But these investigations are going on and thats why they have to continue. Ultimately, what would be very important would be the next steps. What will the president now, President Trump do to avert this happening in the future . Because you can bet that it is going to. Russia learned a lot of lessons from what happened. And part of them, part of that lesson is that they can influence in various ways. They can influence with, again, fake news and tweets and all sorts of things that can affect the mentality of americans not only very concrete factors. Mike, i do want to ask you about something Kellyanne Conway said yesterday on new day. She said she was confident that no votes were changed because of russian meddling. Listen to this. This didnt have an impact on the electoral result. Not a single vote was changed and were going to stand by that. We know that donald trump won fairly and squarely, 306 electoral votes. It had nothing to do with interference. More voters leaning towards donald trump with the constant stream of emails we saw by wikileaks and the havoc it wreaked on the Democratic Party. First of all, i want to go back to something jill said. With all due respect, i think its irresponsible to say nothing is proven yet. When the media uses words like that, it sort of layers over big cast of sort of guilty doubt on these stories and thats what the administration gets so frustrated with. Theres been nothing prove because theres nothing there and tons of people have been looking for it, and the investigations into this socalled collusion go on and on and on and apparently are clouding out what we should be focused on. You dont know that. Which is what the administration did last fall, what did they know and when did they switch reporting this out to people and start focusing on what the Trump Campaign may or may not have done. I think we have to be very careful when we talk about the socalled collusion investigation. In terms of kellyanne is talking about, shes saying the same thing. There have been reports that have come out that the russians tried to hack into sort of machines or different voting things and they werent successful, and thats the key point. It looks like they attempted to do some things where they would have affected votes and they couldnt even get to the first layer. The technical people have said they werent even past the first fire wall that they could get through. And so i think what shes talking about is the fact theres been zero proof this actually benefited anyone, affected anything when it came to actual counting of votes and elections. I think thats different from the fact that we need to focus on what the russian state did to try and interfere in our elections. There are bipartisan investigations into that and we should focus as a nation on what the russians did and not make this sort of some partisan political football to tie and try the Trump Campaign to whats going on and focus on what the government knew, when they knew it, what they reported out back last fall. Jill, i want to give you a chance to respond. Well, ill just say that a lot of this is very difficult to prove. Ill give you an example. And im not saying either side is right, but ill give you an example. There was video that was released, i saw it on Russian Media and certainly these pictures were in the United States on social media, showing Hillary Clinton as very, very ill to the point of maybe even dying or mentally ill, and these pictures were played over and over again. Now, in classic propaganda, you could use a picture like that about any leader and say and show it to people over and over again, and people might begin to believe that why should i vote for somebody who is crazy . Why should i vote for somebody whos going to die . And that can have an effect on an election, which is very hard to quantify. Because we all tend to believe, and i do, too, that when you get to the voting booths and votes, you know, concrete objects, that probably didnt happen. But how the mentality, the psychology of people was affected i think is important to understand, because if we dont understand that, we will miss what russia the techniques that russia is using to influence United States democracy. And of course its very difficult to quantify. Jill dougherty reporting from moscow, thank you. Mike and jose, please stick around. We have a lot more to discuss with you. Jose, ill also give you a chance to respond to the comments from kellyanne. Still ahead, Senate Republicans are unveiling their Health Care Plan and now the focus is turning to getting the votes to actually pass it. The growing resistance within the Republican Party and what itll take to get those critical yes votes. How to win at business. Step one point decisively with the arm of your glasses. Abracadabra. The stage is yours. Step two choose la quinta. The only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free nightinstantly and win at business. Rumor confirmed. Theyre playing. What . 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