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| Obama discusses Russian hacking at year-end press conference – live updates | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| 8.23pm GMT | |
| 20:23 | |
| Obama defends Syria policy: 'unless we were all in... we were going to have problems' | |
| Question: on Aleppo, do you feel any personal moral responsibility for the carnage? And Trump wants safe zones, which you’ve opposed. Will you support him? | |
| Obama: “Mike I always feel responsible. I felt responsible when kids were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions of people were being displaced... for murder and slaughter that’s taking place in South Sudan that’s not being reported... | |
| There’s places around the world where horrible things are happening, and because of my office I feel responsible... there’s not a moment during the course of this presidency where I haven’t felt some responsibility. That’s true by the way for our own country... | |
| With respect to Syria, what I have consistently done is taken the best course I can to try to end the civil war while taking into account the long term national interest of the United States... | |
| Obama says he went through every option in Syria in painful detail with maps, humanitarian agencies, the military... but “short of putting large numbers of US troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from Congress... just gone through a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars, when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough...and you had a military superpower in Russia...and a regional power in Iran... that in that circumstance, unless we were all in and we were willing to take over Syria, then we were going to have problems. And everything else sounded tempting... but it was impossible to do this on the cheap...” | |
| Obama pauses as someone passes out or faints. Obama says go get a doctor. | |
| Obama resumes. “It may be that... | |
| Nope, they need a doctor. A woman appears to have fallen down. She has been picked up. Now they are helping her from the room. They’re going for a doctor. | |
| 8.16pm GMT | |
| 20:16 | |
| Questions for Obama: what about Clinton’s contention that Comey’s letter about emails on Abedin/Weiner’s computer affected the outcome of the election? | |
| Also, what’s risk of Trump ignoring Russian hack? | |
| Obama takes second question first: “The transition from election season to governance season is not always smooth. You know it’s bumpy.” | |
| “When Donald Trump takes the oath of office and is sworn in, he’s got a different set of responsibilities and considerations.” | |
| On his conversations with Trump: | |
| “They have been cordial, and in some cases have involved me making some pretty specific suggestions about how to be sure...a bout maintaining the effectiveness, integrity, cohesion of the office, our various democratic institutions. And he has listened. I can’t say that he will end up implementing...and I will always make myself available to him.” | |
| On the FBI: | |
| “I’ve had a chance to know a lot of FBI agents... they take their job seriously. They work really hard. They help keep us safe and save a lot of lives... | |
| “Sometimes that involves investigations that touch on politics. In this hyperpartisan environment everything is suspect... one thing I have done...is not wading into investigation decisions... to be strict in my own behaviour about preserving the independence of law enforcement.... I don’t know why it would stop now. | |
| 8.10pm GMT | |
| 20:10 | |
| Obama won't say whether Clinton loss owed to hacking | |
| “The reason I’m going on here is because I know you guys have a lot of questions about this. | |
| “With respect to response, my principle goal... was making sure that the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnish, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that tampering had taken place in the actual process of voting. | |
| “Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia and others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you... some of it we can do publicly, some of it we will do in a way that they know it, but not everybody will.” | |
| “We already have enormous numbers of sanctions on the Russians... how we approach an appropriate response that increases costs for them... but does not creat ea problem for us is something that’s worth taking time to figure out. | |
| “There are times where the message will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized.” | |
| “I should point out that part of the reason the Russians have been effective is they’re not going around the world saying look at what we did!” | |
| Obama is asked whether Clinton lost because of the Russians: | |
| I’m going to let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened... it was a fascinating election... I’ve said what is important for the Democratic party... rather than trying to parse every aspect of the election... I don’t think she was treated fairly during the election... I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling. But having said that, what I’m most focused on... I can maybe give some counsel and advice to the Democratic party, and the thing we have to spend the most time on is, how do we make sure that we’re showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed...but people feel like they’re not being heard... We have to be in those communities. | |
| 8.02pm GMT | |
| 20:02 | |
| Obama says media had 'obsession' with hacked Clinton emails | |
| Obama: | |
| I’m finding it a little curious that everybody’s acting surprised that this would have undermined the election of Hillary Clinton because you guys wrote about it every day ... this was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. I do think it’s [important to ask how such a momentous election] came to be dominated by these leaks. | |
| “This was not some elaborate, complicated espionage scheme. They hacked into some Democratic party emails that contained fairly routine stuff. Some of it embarrassing or controversial ... And then it just took off. And that concerns me, and it should concern all of us. But the truth of the matter is that everybody had the information. | |
| “Moving forward, I think there are a couple issues that this raises. Number one, the constant challenges that we are going to have with cybersecurity ... this particular concern around Russian hacking is part of a broader set of concerns about how do we deal with cybersecurity.” | |
| Updated | |
| at 8.08pm GMT | |
| 7.57pm GMT | |
| 19:57 | |
| Obama points out that Trump was raising questions about the integrity of the election. He says that the White House undermining that integrity further would not have been good. | |
| “In early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way ... was to talk to him directly, and to tell him to cut it out and there would be consequences if they didn’t.” | |
| “We did not see further tampering of the election process, but the leaks from Wikileaks were already out there.” | |
| “I think we handled it the way it should have been handled,” he says. | |
| Updated | |
| at 8.08pm GMT | |
| 7.55pm GMT | |
| 19:55 | |
| Obama defends handling of Russian hacking | |
| First question for Obama: Are you letting Vladimir Putin for hacking the US election? Do you agree that the hacking was partially responsible for Clinton’s loss? | |
| Obama says with respect to the transition, the Trump team would acknowledge that he’s done everything his team can to help it. | |
| Obama and Trump spoke a few days ago, he says. | |
| “The Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC,” Obama says. “It is important for us to review all elements of that... that should be a bipartisan issue, that shouldn’t be a partisan issue. .. My hope is that the president-elect is going to be similarly concerned that we shouldn’t have foreign interference in our election process.” | |
| “I think it is important for us to distinguish between the politics of the election and the need for us as a country... to make sure that we don’t create a political football here.” | |
| “Let’s go through the facts... at the beginning of the summer, we’re alerted to the possibility that the DNC has been hacked.” | |
| Obama says he ordered a thorough investigation and had the victims of the DNC briefed and Congress briefed. “Once we had clarity and certainty around what had happened, we publicly announced that in fact Russia had hacked into the DNC. At that time we did not attribute motives... we did not discuss what the effects of that might be.” | |
| Obama says the media interpreted the hacking. “We did not [because]... I wanted to make sure that everybody understood we were playing this thing straight.” | |
| Obama says “you might want to take this into account,” was the White House message at the time. | |
| 7.49pm GMT | 7.49pm GMT |
| 19:49 | 19:49 |
| Obama criticizes Russia for participating in Syrian slaughter | Obama criticizes Russia for participating in Syrian slaughter |
| Obama warns that the tragedy of Aleppo is deepening and says the crisis is the exclusive fault of “the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran, and its blood is on their hands.” | Obama warns that the tragedy of Aleppo is deepening and says the crisis is the exclusive fault of “the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran, and its blood is on their hands.” |
| “Regretfully but unsurprisingly, Russia has blocked the security council from taking action on these issues,” Obama says. | “Regretfully but unsurprisingly, Russia has blocked the security council from taking action on these issues,” Obama says. |
| “Over the long term, the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy,” Obama says. | “Over the long term, the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy,” Obama says. |
| “The Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. The world should not be fooled. And the world will not forget.” | “The Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. The world should not be fooled. And the world will not forget.” |
| 7.46pm GMT | 7.46pm GMT |
| 19:46 | 19:46 |
| Obama claims troop drawdowns overseas from 180,000+ to 15,000 and says “no foreign terrorist organization has successfully carried out an attack on our homeland that was directed from overseas.” | Obama claims troop drawdowns overseas from 180,000+ to 15,000 and says “no foreign terrorist organization has successfully carried out an attack on our homeland that was directed from overseas.” |
| “By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started.” | “By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started.” |
| He credits the American people. “I could not be prouder to be your president.” | He credits the American people. “I could not be prouder to be your president.” |
| There’s a lot more work to be done, he says. | There’s a lot more work to be done, he says. |
| 7.43pm GMT | 7.43pm GMT |
| 19:43 | 19:43 |
| Obama says he’s going to talk about “how far we’ve come over the past eight years.” | Obama says he’s going to talk about “how far we’ve come over the past eight years.” |
| “We’ve seen the longest streak of job growth on record,” he says. “For the first time in history, 90% of Americans are insured” on health, he says. He says he prevented a crisis on Wall Street without stifling growth. “The stock market has nearly tripled.” “Last year the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate in almost 50 years. ... and we’ve done all this by cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirds.” | “We’ve seen the longest streak of job growth on record,” he says. “For the first time in history, 90% of Americans are insured” on health, he says. He says he prevented a crisis on Wall Street without stifling growth. “The stock market has nearly tripled.” “Last year the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate in almost 50 years. ... and we’ve done all this by cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirds.” |
| 7.41pm GMT | 7.41pm GMT |
| 19:41 | 19:41 |
| Here’s Obama. | Here’s Obama. |
| 7.41pm GMT | 7.41pm GMT |
| 19:41 | 19:41 |
| FBI agrees with CIA on Russian hacking, CIA says | FBI agrees with CIA on Russian hacking, CIA says |
| The FBI agrees with the CIA’s assessment that Russian hackers tried to tip the US election to Donald Trump, the Washington Post is reporting. The Post report quotes a statement by CIA director John Brennan | The FBI agrees with the CIA’s assessment that Russian hackers tried to tip the US election to Donald Trump, the Washington Post is reporting. The Post report quotes a statement by CIA director John Brennan |
| Trump has denied the hacking occurred, though in July he invited Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton’s “missing” emails, and on 8 October, one month before the election, the office of the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a joint statement formally accusing Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks. | Trump has denied the hacking occurred, though in July he invited Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton’s “missing” emails, and on 8 October, one month before the election, the office of the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a joint statement formally accusing Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks. |
| The FBI, where a culture thrived of deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton, had not previously joined the CIA and DHS assessment of the situation. | The FBI, where a culture thrived of deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton, had not previously joined the CIA and DHS assessment of the situation. |
| Barack Obama has ordered an intelligence community review of evidence of Russian hacking in the presidential election. | Barack Obama has ordered an intelligence community review of evidence of Russian hacking in the presidential election. |
| 7.17pm GMT | 7.17pm GMT |
| 19:17 | 19:17 |
| Journalists in heavy attendance for this one: | Journalists in heavy attendance for this one: |
| Never in four years have seen the White House briefing room this packed. Obama news conference starts momentarily pic.twitter.com/sXRXn6FgPw | Never in four years have seen the White House briefing room this packed. Obama news conference starts momentarily pic.twitter.com/sXRXn6FgPw |
| 7.10pm GMT | 7.10pm GMT |
| 19:10 | 19:10 |
| Here’s a live video stream: | Here’s a live video stream: |
| 7.03pm GMT | 7.03pm GMT |
| 19:03 | 19:03 |
| Sobering thought. | Sobering thought. |
| Given the fact that Trump hasn't held a press conference since July, this could be the last Presidential press conference for a long time | Given the fact that Trump hasn't held a press conference since July, this could be the last Presidential press conference for a long time |
| 6.42pm GMT | 6.42pm GMT |
| 18:42 | 18:42 |
| Hello and welcome to our live blog coverage of Barack Obama’s final pre-holiday press conference. The president is due to appear at the White House shortly, and is expected to address the ongoing slaughter of Aleppo, Syria; Russian hacking during the US presidential election; the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump; and other topics. | Hello and welcome to our live blog coverage of Barack Obama’s final pre-holiday press conference. The president is due to appear at the White House shortly, and is expected to address the ongoing slaughter of Aleppo, Syria; Russian hacking during the US presidential election; the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump; and other topics. |
| Obama departs for family vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii, later today. The mood of these pre-holiday appearances is typically fairly light. The headlines, however, are grim. | Obama departs for family vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii, later today. The mood of these pre-holiday appearances is typically fairly light. The headlines, however, are grim. |
| Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments. | Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments. |