On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel stated that the indictments of Russians for interfering in the 2016 election “are very telling that the Obama administration lost sight of Russia during their tenure.”
McDaniel said, “I think it’s — these indictments are very telling that the Obama administration lost sight of Russia during their tenure. I mean, I look back at 2012 when Mitt Romney said, ‘Hey, our biggest geopolitical foe is Russia,’ and President Obama laughed at him and said, ‘the 80s are calling. They want their foreign policy back.’ And now we know that these organizations started in 2014 to put together plans to meddle in our elections, to create chaos. They weren’t trying to help Republicans or Democrats. They want to hurt our democracy. And we need to get to the bottom of it, and we need to find out what we can do in 2018 to prevent this from happening in our midterm elections.”
Anchor Neil Cavuto later asked, “[T]he fact of the matter is, this is something the president himself has dismissed that didn’t happen. Are you saying that he was wrong?”
McDaniel answered, “Because the president didn’t put this in place. Listen, it happened under the Obama administration. Democrats want to create this collusion argument. Democrats should be pointing to their previous president, President Obama, and saying, ‘How did you miss this?'”
Cavuto followed up, “But this president has said that this — all this stuff wasn’t even going on. Now, he’s acknowledging that it was.”
McDaniel responded, “He has acknowledged it and he acknowledged it in his statement today, as has the vice president.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett