Donald Trump broke his post-election press silence on Wednesday with a pugnacious press conference performance, at one point engaging in a shouting match with CNN.
ADVERTISEMENTDonald Trump has given his first post-election press conference, an at times lively affair during which Trump claimed he was leading a movement the likes of which the world had never seen.
He was scathing about the latest allegations against him.
“I think it’s a disgrace that information would be let out. I saw the information, I read it outside of that meeting, it’s all fake news, phoney stuff, it didn’t happen…It was a group of opponents who got together – sick people – and they put that crap together.”
The latest allegations, that the Russians have financial dirt on Trump and collected compromising sexual material on him during the Miss Universe competition in Moscow in 2013, are now thought by security industry insiders to have come from an ex-MI6 officer.
US media on Wednesday evening identified him as “most likely” Christopher Steele, who today is a director of a private security company, Orbis Business Intelligence Limited. He is also director of a company called Walsingham Training which says it provides courses to company executives on subjects ranging from “Understanding and mitigating the cyber and physical risk posed by hostile states, criminals and companies,” to “how to gain traction in complex markets like Russia” and “how to recognize misinformation.” Steele has yet to comment.
Trump even got into a shouting match with TV nemesis CNN, calling it a “terrible” organisation producing “fake news”.
Trump claimed America was wide open to hackers, but not for much longer if he had anything to do with it, and he had this to say in response to questions about suspicions Russian hacking has infiltrated US politics.
“If you do indeed believe that Russia was behind the hacking, what is your message to Vladimir Putin right now?”
“He shouldn’t be doing it, he won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading it.”
He left the stage still being bombarded with questions from the angry CNN reporter, but Trump’s performance left many questions unanswered, with the assembled press corps still visibly uncertain as to when some answers would be forthcoming.