President-elect Donald Trump is at war with US intelligence agencies. In an astonishing press conference full of bluster and bitterness on Wednesday, he publicly derided and threatened American spookdom for allegedly leaking stories he described as “fake and false,” including a lurid and unsubstantiated account of him consorting with hookers in a Moscow hotel and having them urinate on a bed used by President Obama.
The salacious account, part of a sketchy leaked memo that spoke of Russian efforts to compromise him, took centre stage at a shambolic press conference at which Trump hectored the media and trained his guns on US intelligence agencies, alternately praising and warning them. He said the website BuzzFeed, which published the intelligence memo, will “suffer the consequences” even as he repeatedly insulted news organisations such as CNN and New York Times, accusing them of peddling “fake news.”
The Moscow hotel episode, dubbed “golden showers” was fictitious and never happened, he and his aides said at a free-for-all news conference where barbs, insults, and snide asides were aplenty with an occasional bout of laughter, mainly from Trump aides. “I’m also very much of a germophobe,” Trump said by way of explanation of why it could not have happened.
The US President-elect however acknowledged at a broader level that Moscow could be hacking US computers, but argued that they would stop doing it now and the US would be more respected by countries such as Russia, China, Japan, and Mexico under his leadership.
Even as he agreed that Russia could be behind the hack, he also pointed a finger at China and blamed the Democratic Party’s own vulnerability for hacks that the US intelligence community said was aimed at engineering his victory.
Trump also declined to again disclose his tax returns, saying no one but the media cared about them while announcing that he would leave his business to be run by his sons for eight years (indicating he expects to run and win a second term). He boasted that he had the capacity to do both run the country and his business, he would not do it because it would not look good.
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